The Cypriot parliament has approved a new law that will require property records and revaluations to be carried out every five years, rather than every three years as under previously approved rules.
This change will help to reduce the state's expenditure on audits by an average of €2 million per year.
It should be noted that there are currently about 2 million properties in Cyprus. Of these, 200,000 were not included in the register of the Land Department until 2013, when the authorities carried out a revaluation of land, residential and commercial properties. This meant that the treasury was missing out on millions of euros in unpaid property taxes.
To put an end to the confusion, the island introduced a new comprehensive property valuation on 1 January 2018. They started using satellite images of the area to register properties. Re-registration and revaluation of properties based on market value was carried out every three years. However, experience has shown that market fluctuations are not significant during this period. Therefore, the deputies decided to extend the period between revisions of residential and commercial real estate, as well as land.
It should be recalled that the registration and revaluation of property in line with its market value is one of the requirements of the 'troika' of international creditors (European Central Bank, European Commission and International Monetary Fund), compliance with which enabled Cyprus to obtain a loan of 7 billion EUR.
It is worth noting that property valuation is regularly required for the assessment of taxes on the sale and purchase of real estate, as well as for the assessment of municipal taxes for garbage collection and the maintenance of sewage and drainage systems.