Interior Minister Nicos Nouris said that the process of issuing Title Deeds for real estate has significantly accelerated in Cyprus.
This made it possible to significantly reduce the volume of documents that are being considered by the competent authorities, which should be good news for those who have been unable to obtain Title Deeds for their real estate for years.
In particular, according to Nouris, if in 2014 120,000 title deeds were not issued in the country, today this gap has decreased to 19,190.
Of the total, 8000 Titles are expected to be issued during 2022, plus 6,500 with Notes *. As for the remaining 5 thousand, the authorities are doing everything possible to process and respond to these Titles as soon as possible.
Nouris also mentioned that the new licensing policy from October 2020 allows for the submission of electronic applications for Title Deed, thereby speeding up the process and making the procedure more efficient and transparent.
* Title with notes.
Such Title Deeds record unauthorized work and indicate that the developer has not met the conditions set out in the planning and construction permits for the project.
In some cases, the buyers make unauthorized changes to the purchased property prior to the issuance of the Title Deed. This leads to the fact that the Title deeds for their property are issued with notes. Such real estate cannot be sold or mortgaged until all planning irregularities have been eliminated. And only after the real estate has been corrected, a "clean" Title deed is issued, allowing it to be sold or mortgaged.
It should be noted that the Title Deed is the main document of the owner of real estate or land in Cyprus, which confirms and secures the owner's right to a specific object.
The buyer can receive such a certificate at the final stage of the purchase and sale transaction. To do this, they need to reserve the property with the Cyprus Land Committee and pay its full value. The absence of a Title can promise big problems for the new owner. Without this document, they will not be able to dispose of real estate or land in full, i.e. it is almost impossible to sell, mortgage or inherit such property.
Only Title Deed, issued in the name of the owner, gives the right to dispose of the property or land in full.
Special care must be taken when buying a new home in Cyprus as Title Deeds cannot be issued for a number of reasons, including: unpaid land division fees, no application or payment for a sewerage license, walls too low around the perimeter of the roof, unfinished landscape design.
In these cases, the developer responsible for the violation of planning is released from liability - and the buyer of the property only has to pay for all the necessary repairs, and then sue the developer to get his money back!
It is necessary to clearly understand:
- Since title deeds that have notes cannot be sold, they have no market value.
- Although the property has no market value, homeowners are required to pay transfer fees based on the Land Registry's estimate of its market value at the date of purchase.
- The buyer is obliged to pay for the negligence of the builder (developer) in order to receive a “clean” Title deed, allowing the property to be sold.
- To recover the cost of any additional work, the buyer must sue the developer
Have you decided to buy an apartment or a house in Cyprus? Contact the DOM Real Estate portal! The website has a large selection of real estate objects - residential and commercial. Experienced agency specialists will be happy to help you make the right choice.