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19th March 2024
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HomeLettersWhen will the government protect property buyers?

When will the government protect property buyers?

I AM WRITING in reference to the letter by Chris Solomon, published in the Sunday Mail of January 29, 2012: “Paying for my developer’s illegalities“.

Does this not simply highlight the hypocrisy of the Government’s so-called efforts to assist buyers in obtaining their title deeds?

In truth, isn’t this so-called amnesty simply the latest piece of useless legislation designed to protect the guilty – government, developers, lawyers and bankers – in this long running farce?

The government does not use existing legislation to protect buyers, the developers simply ignore planning and building regulations, the lawyers seldom seem to protect their clients during the buying process and the bankers are quite happy to give out a mortgage on a property that has already been mortgaged by your developer.

With some people going to all this effort and expense to obtain their title deeds through this process, many are yet to find out that the title deeds they have every right to own will, in fact, be tainted, because the building irregularities that affect their homes cannot be resolved, thus potentially leaving their homes either unsaleable or with a substantially-reduced value.

In actual fact, we should not have been in the position of requiring a planning amnesty had the government simply enforced existing legislation.

Article 10 of The Streets and Buildings Regulations Law, Chap 96 states the following: ‘No person shall occupy, use or permit any other person to occupy or use any building until a certificate of approval has been issued in respect thereof by the appropriate authority.’

Taking this into consideration then, tens of thousands of us hapless buyers should therefore not even be in occupation of homes that do not comply with planning and building regulations.

When will this government stop tinkering around the edges and simply enforce existing legislation, so as to protect buyers and pursue the guilty?

Andrew McClay,
United Kingdom

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5 COMMENTS

  1. Andrew, further to my last post and in answer to the key question posed by your article:

    The Cypriot Government already does protects a group of property owners, unfortuately I and approximately 50,000 others do not fall into this group!

    I suspect that you don’t fall into this group either?

    I wonder what it is that seperates us from the protected group?

  2. @ Andrew…
    It’s not a problem here in Cyprus because the Russians are coming to save the beleaguered building industry. The Russians have given Cyprus €2.5b in loans as they like the Cypriots and the way they do business.

Comments are closed.

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