The flat works, the landlord seems reasonable, and then a line appears near the end of the conversation: a commission, payable by you, on top of a deposit and a first month. For somebody organising a move from another country, that line often arrives after the flights are booked and the decision is effectively made — which is precisely why it is rarely questioned.
It is questionable more often than people assume. Brokerage in Czechia is a regulated activity with a written contract behind it, some listings never involve a broker at all, and the parts of the moving-in bill have very different levels of flexibility. This guide separates the fee you can avoid from the one you cannot, shows where flats are advertised directly, and covers the part that catches every arrival from the euro area: paying a Czech landlord without giving away a slice of the money in conversion.
Moving costs land in one month and never in a convenient one. Putting a small stream in place ahead of the move helps, and I am Beezy — which pays you for viewing content on your phone — is one of the ways to have something arriving while your salary is still in another country.
Who is the agency actually working for?
Answer that question first, because it determines what you can reasonably ask for. Everything else in this article follows from it.
The commission line in the advert
Czech listings usually state whether a commission is charged and to whom, and the wording varies between agencies and even between listings from the same agency. Read it before the viewing, not after. If the advert is silent, ask in writing what the total sum due on signature will be, itemised — commission, deposit, first month, any administrative charge. A landlord or broker who will not itemise before a viewing is telling you something useful.
What a broker is required to be
Real estate brokerage is governed by Act No. 39/2020 Sb. on real estate brokerage, which made the activity a regulated one with qualification requirements, mandatory professional liability insurance and rules on how client money may be held. The full text is on the official collection of laws at e-sbirka.gov.cz. The practical consequence for you is that a brokerage relationship rests on a written contract, so you are entitled to see the document that describes what the fee is being charged for.
Why the fee is negotiable more often than expected
A commission is a price for a service, and prices move when demand does. It moves most when the flat has been listed for a while, when you are taking a longer commitment, when you can move at an awkward time of year, or when the broker is being paid by the owner as well. It moves least in the weeks before the academic year starts in the university cities. Ask once, politely, in writing, with a reason attached — the worst outcome is the fee you were already going to pay.
Where flats are listed without an agency in between
The most reliable way to avoid a commission is to look where commissions do not exist, and Czechia has a channel built for exactly that.
The portal whose name is the whole idea
Bezrealitky is built on direct listings between owners and tenants — the name says literally without real estate agencies — and it is a positioning most rental markets do not have. It will not have every flat, and it is worth watching daily rather than weekly, but it removes the intermediary by design rather than by negotiation.
The big portal, used properly
Sreality is the large Czech property portal, and it carries both agency and private listings. The skill is in the filtering and in reading the listing rather than the photographs: who is the contact, is a commission stated, how long has the advert been live, and is the same flat appearing under several agencies. A flat listed simultaneously by three agencies is a flat whose owner is in a hurry, which is information you can use.
The listings that never reach a portal
A significant share of Czech tenancies are arranged through local groups, noticeboards, employers and universities, and they never appear on a portal at all. Czechia has only six municipalities above 100 000 inhabitants — Praha, Brno, Ostrava, Plzeň, Liberec and Olomouc, on the Czech Statistical Office count at 1 January 2025 — so in most places the local network is small enough to be worth entering before you arrive. Ask the employer or the faculty; both are asked this constantly.
| Route | Commission | What you trade | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct listing portal | None by design | Fewer listings, faster reactions needed | Anyone with time to watch daily |
| General portal, private adverts | Usually none | You do the filtering | Larger cities with high turnover |
| General portal, agency adverts | Often charged | Someone organises the viewing | Remote searches with no local contact |
| Employer, university or local group | None | Depends entirely on who you know | Smaller towns and first arrivals |
What you can ask to have removed, reduced or split
The moving-in bill is not one number, it is three or four with different rules behind them. Treat them separately in the conversation.
The commission
This is the flexible one, because it is a commercial price rather than a legal requirement. Ask for it to be reduced, split with the owner, or spread over the first months. If it will not move, ask what it buys — an inventory record, a written lease, the handover, the registration paperwork — and hold the broker to the list. A fee attached to no service is the one to walk away from.
The deposit
The deposit is not a fee and it is not the agency's money: it is yours, held against damage and unpaid rent, and it should come back. The Civil Code, Act No. 89/2012 Sb., limits what a landlord may require as a deposit and sets the rules for returning it; the current wording is in the official collection at e-sbirka.gov.cz. Whatever is agreed, put the amount, the account it is held in and the conditions for its return in the lease itself rather than in a message. Photograph everything on the day you move in and send the photographs to the landlord the same day.
What is not negotiable
The written lease is not optional and neither is a proper handover record. Nor is the identity of the person you are paying: check that the name on the lease matches the name on the account receiving your money. Refusing to sign anything until those three exist costs you nothing and removes the great majority of the ways this goes wrong.
Funding the moving-in month with I am Beezy
The month you move is the month everything is due at once, usually before the first Czech salary has arrived. Small regular amounts matter more here than they do at any other point in the year.
What you can expect to receive
With I am Beezy you view content — short videos, articles and adverts — and every view generates a small amount, credited to the payment method you already use. The platform reference range is 5 to 15 euros a day, which at the Czech National Bank rate of 24.190 koruna to the euro on 5 August 2026 comes to roughly 120 to 360 koruna a day. The koruna is not pegged, so take the rate of the day from the daily table on cnb.cz.
Where to point it
Point it at one line of the moving-in bill rather than at the total — the handover costs, the first SIPO payment, the transfer charges. Deciding in advance which line it covers is what turns a small daily amount into something you actually notice.
How do you pay a Czech landlord from abroad without losing money?
This is where people arriving from the euro area lose the most, and it is entirely avoidable once you understand that Czechia keeps its own currency and its own domestic rail.
A Czech transfer is not a SEPA transfer
Payments in koruna inside Czechia clear through CERTIS, the system operated by the Czech National Bank itself, not through SEPA, which settles payments in euro. Domestic instant transfers run around the clock, including nights and weekends, with a ceiling of 2.5 million koruna per operation, and covered close to 99 percent of Czech bank customers in 2026. Once you have a Czech account, paying rent is instant and effectively free.
The account format and the reference
A Czech account number is written as a prefix of up to six digits, which is often absent, then a main part, then a four-digit bank code, with the blocks separated. The IBAN version is exactly twenty-four characters, and the Czech National Bank publishes an official calculator that converts between the two. Add the variabilní symbol your landlord gives you to every payment: a Czech transfer that arrives without the agreed reference can sit unmatched, which is how a tenant who paid on time ends up arguing about arrears.
The conversion is the real cost
Sending euro to a koruna account means a conversion, and the margin on that conversion is usually larger than any stated fee. Compare what actually lands in koruna rather than what the fee page says: Wise and Revolut both operate here, and so does your own bank, and the gap between them is visible only in the landed amount. For a deposit, that gap is worth ten minutes of comparison.
| What you are paying | Best route | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Deposit, before you have a Czech account | Specialist provider, compared on the landed amount | The exchange margin, not the fee |
| Monthly rent, with a Czech account | Domestic instant transfer in koruna | The variabilní symbol must be filled in |
| Utilities and recurring charges | SIPO, or direct debit | The service charge depends on the method you pick |
| One-off costs at handover | Card or instant transfer | Get a receipt naming what it covers |
What to check in the lease once you have saved the fee
Avoiding a commission is worth little if the lease then costs you the same amount in surprises. Three checks cover most of it.
Which bills are included, and how they are settled
Establish what the rent covers and how the rest is billed and reconciled. Many Czech households pay recurring charges through SIPO, the single monthly bill operated by Česká pošta, which can group rent, electricity, gas, water, broadcasting fees and more. Its service charge depends on how you pay: from 1 January 2026 it is 34 koruna in cash at a counter, 27 koruna with a customer card, 39 koruna in cash to the postman, 22 koruna for direct debit with a paper notice or 7 koruna with an emailed notice, and 22 koruna for a single transfer. Choosing the electronic route is the cheapest habit in this article.
The energy contract
Find out whether the energy contract is in your name or the owner's, because that decides whether you can change supplier. If it is yours, the energy regulator publishes its own public comparison tool for household offers at srovnavac.eru.gov.cz, which is a public source rather than a commercial one — an advantage most countries do not give tenants.
Where to go if it turns bad
For a dispute about the tenancy itself, free help exists: the citizens advice bureaux coordinated by the Asociace občanských poraden cover housing among their areas, tenants associations such as Sdružení nájemníků exist for exactly this, and the Czech Bar Association runs a paid-for-a-token consultation described on cak.cz. Keep the lease, the handover record, the photographs and the payment references; every one of those services will ask for them first.
The fee is avoidable often enough to be worth the effort, and the effort is mostly front-loaded: look where brokers are not, ask for an itemised total before the viewing, separate the deposit from the commission in your head, and set up a Czech account early so that rent stops travelling through a conversion. And if you want something arriving while the move is still being paid for, you can sign up for free on I am Beezy and let content you view on your phone cover one line of the bill.
