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28th March 2024
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Buying Land in Cyprus

Buying Land in Cyprus

Many thanks for the information about the roof for our property in Cyprus. In your reply, you say that our architect will be able to advise us of the costs of the various options. We don’t have an architect, but we’ve seen a plot of land we like and the person who’s selling it says he’ll design and build the house for us. Will he be able to give us the costs?

Answer

If the person from whom you’re buying the land insists on having a clause in the contract of sale stating that he will build the property for you; do not buy the land. There are two issues – quality and price. Let me explain.

  • Some land owners realise that they can make a bigger profit by selling their land complete with a property to unsuspecting expatriates. Most of these people have about as much knowledge of building a house as I have of brain surgery! A couple at the eastern end of the island fell into this trap – it took the ‘builder’ 3 years to build their house. The build quality was appalling and the couple sold it as soon as they could and moved elsewhere.
  • I know of at least one property developer in Cyprus who is playing this game. A couple of years ago, I was contacted by someone from North America who bought a plot of land from a very well known developer in Paphos. One of the conditions in his contract was that the developer would start building his house no later than 3 years after he’d signed the contract. When the time came, the property developer wanted 375,000 to build an extremely modest 3 bedroom house of 150m2. Eventually, they negotiated a settlement whereby the developer bought the land back at the same price he’d sold it for (even though the value of the land had more than doubled in the 3 years).

If you’re planning to build a custom property in Cyprus, I strongly advise that you engage the services of an architect to design your home and oversee its construction.

One of the things architect will do is get several competitive quotes for the construction through a competitive tendering process. You and he will then evaluate the tender responses by inspecting properties built by each of the contractors to assess quality, speaking with the owners of those properties, etc, etc, etc.

If you want more information on how to go about buying land and building a custom home in Cyprus, there are several pages on my website at www.cyprus-property-buyers.com

Some vendors of land try to make it a condition of sale that you employ their services to build your property. Your lawyer must ensure that any such conditions are excluded from the contract of sale; they are most definitely not in your best interests!

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