A REVISED draft bill will go before the House Legal Affairs Committee next week as MPs continue to look for ways for ‘trapped’ property buyers to finally get Title Deeds.
Protracted efforts have been underway to help good faith property buyers who have paid for their property but have been unable to obtain Title Deeds because property developers and contractors used it as collateral.
A law that was previously approved by parliament ran into legal difficulties, thus the new effort to resolve the problem.
On Wednesday, the committee went through the bill clause by clause in the presence of the director of the land and surveys department and it was agreed that further tweaking was necessary.
“A revised bill will be drafted based on what was heard today. I believe that, after 16 meetings of the committee and in cooperation with the services of the House and of the Land and Surveys Department, the bill will to a large extent resolve the long-standing problem with the non-issue of Title Deeds to good faith buyers,” said the chairman of the committee, Disy MP Yiorgos Georgiou.
The final text will be discussed on Tuesday and Wednesday so that the bill can go to the plenary on July 12.
According to the Cyprus News Agency, up until the end of May, a total of 6,089 Title Deeds had been issued or transferred to trapped buyers. Overall, 17,443 applications were submitted to district offices of the Land and Surveys Department.
Most pending applications concern cases where there is a Title Deed (9,567), while 7,876 applications concern properties without a Title Deed, which are more difficult to deal with.
The largest number of applications from trapped buyers were submitted to the Famagusta office (4,349), of which 2,925 concern properties without a Title Deed.
Next came Paphos with 4,235 applications, Larnaca with 3,365, Nicosia with 3,100 and Limassol with 2,394. Numbers are up compared to last October.
Initially, the department had around 8,000 applications, the vast majority of which (7,773) concerned properties without a Title Deed.
© In-Cyprus.com
That is nice to hear I have just paid the bank a substantial amount to lift the court case objection and also start a new trapped buyers application as the one which had just reached the 60 day period was scrapped when the bank took out the court action because the developer had mortgage on the land now we have to wait to see who else might crawl out the woodwork as I believe the developer has gone into administration.
I agree with Pantheman – What good is the deed if you still cannot sell or mortgage it?
All it does is put trapped buyers in a worse situation plus you HAVE to pay to get them. This puts you in the position of having to pay even more money to be trapped again.
On top of this, if the Developer has done a runner, we have to fork out more money to pay to make good. Not all of us could afford to do that.
It’s a disgrace.
Horse has bolted.
The Stable Door.
Like Closing.
After the.
Whatever the bill says, the crooked developers will find a way around it. Just as before.
The issuing of the title deed is not the only issue. That is the easy bit. They should also issue it WITHOUT the non-conformity notes preventing transfer and security. They should chase the developer and his assets for payments to make good his failings.
What good is the deed if you still cannot sell or mortgage it??
This is the message they need to hear and Nigel I think this is what you should be telling them.
Ed: I’m sure they could chase the developers in many cases. But where the development company has gone into liquidation, the only option will be for the buyers to pay (unless the government is willing to put its hand in its pocket.)