As the issue of title deeds for trapped buyers drags on, one British expat living in Xylofagou is desperately trying to be issued his almost a decade since applying for it.
Briton Kenneth Beck, 75, is now looking to sell his flat and move back to England to be with his family but in keeping with many more the lack of a title deed is preventing him from leaving.
He first bought the flat in 2007 with the intention to retire. After seeing developer advertising, he made the choice to come to Cyprus, buying a flat at complex with a pool near the sea.
However, he did not imagine the complexity of owning a property in Cyprus, and shortly after he bought the flat, the developers went into voluntary liquidation, meaning anyone who had bought a flat was stuck without title deeds. For Beck this means he is now facing problems as it is only now he wants to sell and is having difficulty selling the property for it real value.
Beck was not alone in seeing his investment sink into a black hole; many buyers were left high and dry as companies collapsed with buyers unable to get their title deeds. This led to the government of Cyprus in 2015 passing the trapped buyers law to help those who for various reasons were unable to get title deeds for their properties. The government was faced with thousands of such cases.
Its solution with the law was to have the buyers fill out applications to the land registry department, which would begin investigating the cases and proceed with issuing the title deeds if their property matched what was written on plans.
The land registry told the Sunday Mail that in the case of Beck and the other residents of this apartment complex in Xylofagou the deeds were issued in 2019 to the developer even though it no longer existed as a company, following an application filed in 2015.
But the residents have yet to receive them. As the developer no longer exists as a legal entity they are now waiting for the land registry to issue them.
This has left Beck and all the other residents going back and forth from office to office including the Town Planning and Housing authority, which has told them that the developer failed to meet obligations laid out in the original plans of the building.
Town planning and the district office in Larnaca have told residents that works need to be done before the title deeds can be given to them. This has resulted in the residents in the building undertaking some of the works themselves.
Beck, who has been recently diagnosed with diabetes, has been trying along with the building’s residents committee to deal with the situation, but has been left feeling all he has achieved is shuttling from one government office to another.
His property has been valued at €80,000 but without the title deed in hand he can only sell it for half that value. Without the title deed, he has been told that his apartment would only go for €45,000.
Beck says he feels “held hostage” by the situation because he wants to go back to England and be closer to his family, especially now he needs more help taking care of himself.
At Beck’s complex, the Sunday Mail learned that around 60-70 people that have been affected by this situation and are still without their title deeds, and in many cases people just gave in and left or have since died.
Since buying his flat, Beck said he has applied for title deeds five times, both before and after the law was passed in 2015.
He feels he has been left in a position where the government departments responsible for issuing the deeds need to move forward and stop wasting time, leaving him to sort through file numbers and documents at a time when he is trying to leave the island.
We bought our villa in 2003 (off plan) and moved in in 2004. To date we don’t have title deeds and made the application as soon as we were made aware with the Land Registry around 2015/16.
I am aware of other developments getting there deeds (with notes attached – dirty deeds) which truthfully aren’t worth it as you can’t get a mortgage and I believe there are legal issues trying to sell one as well. It’s actually better/easier to sell a property without deeds rather than have notes issued.
Some people have paid for all sorts of works and still don’t have clean title deeds, this just adds to the issues and expense.
It seems the developers get all the money from the purchasers, Thea all borrow against said sold homes and fail to pay the right taxes to the government. Then even when they aren’t finished the purchaser has to pay extra to do what the developer should have done in the first place, just not right.
It’s a nightmare for many, especially as a lot of expats are now getting older and not as able to deal with all it’s challenges, it just isn’t right.
There should have been a robust approach to the developers paying and sorting these issues but there isn’t.
I hope Kenneth gets clean deeds soon, I still await mine 19yrs on.
I have an apartment on St. Nicolas Chloraka I do have title deeds after many years struggling to get them however St. Nicolas has been taken over by Syrian refugees who have destroyed the complex and the authorities do nothing to help. It is heartbreaking.
I do feel so sorry for anyone like that. But people saying you’ll only get half the price because you haven’t got a title deed are very wrong.