The following letter was published in the Cyprus Mail and illustrates yet again the nightmare faced by many when trying to get their Title Deeds.
Its author isn’t a ‘trapped buyer’ but someone who cannot get Title Deeds for the property he purchased because it suffers from severe planning irregularities and other issues.
Title deed nightmare
I bought a property in Cyprus in 2007, but I am still not in possession of the title deeds as they are with my developer. I signed the contract of sale in August 2007 endorsed by two representatives of the development company.
My building had already been constructed and I had many meetings with my lawyer about my deeds and he told me on each occasion that everything was OK, but the land registry had a backlog.
I also applied to the land registry about three times paying €10 each time to obtain my deeds but to no avail.
There are restrictions on the property as follows:
- The block where my apartment is has been built in the wrong place.
- There is no chemical plant to go with the cesspit.
- There are no completion certificates from the site civil engineer or architect.
- The roads have not been completed.
- The site has not been completed.
- The site is illegal.
I have been told that I can pay to have all these restrictions removed from my title deeds. I will not do this because while it means I can sell the property to someone else; these restrictions will still be in place.
Lionel Grancourt
(Thousands of other buyers are in a similar position to Lionel; here’s an article I wrote on the subject – Sewerage blocks Title Deeds. There are ten or so apartment blocks in Paphos with the same problem, all of which were built by the same developer who is no longer in business.)
Gross injustice
To overcome the issues listed, Lionel and others in his block need to club together and pay to correct the planning infringements and any other remedial work required to issue ‘clean’ Title Deeds, while the developer responsible for causing the issues gets off scot-free.
Lionel and his neighbours may then sue the developer (assuming the company’s still in business) to recover their money
The simplest solution to this gross injustice is for the planning authority to impose fines on the ‘criminal’ (i.e. the developer responsible for the planning infringements) sufficient to pay for the remedial work required to issue a clean ‘Title Deed’, plus a further amount to dissuade the ‘crook’ from repeating his misdemeanours.
Are clean Title Deeds safe?
Although it’s usually safe to buy properties that have been issued with a ‘clean’ Title Deed, it’s not always plain sailing.
Lional writes that “the block where my apartment is has been built in the wrong place”, I suspect his block encroaches on someone else’s property.
Friends in Limassol and Larnaca, who had ‘clean’ Title Deeds, discovered their properties encroached on land belonging to their neighbour. Both had the option of losing part of their property or compensating their neighbour for the encroachment.
In an unrelated case I heard that a couple, on returning from a holiday, discovered that part of their garage had been demolished because it encroached on their neighbour’s land.
Generally, encroachment affects land that has not been surveyed for many years (or where developers have conveniently ‘forgotten’ to survey the land on which they’re building).
Surveyors today use modern theodolites, which can measure the land to within a few millimetres using GPS and electronic distance meters (EDM.) These are far more accurate that the technology used in the past. As a consequence, land appears to have ‘moved’, encroaching on a neighbouring property.
To avoid potential encroachment issues, I advise anyone buying land or an older property in a village to have its boundaries checked by a registered surveyor even though the property has been issued with a clean Title Deed.
I bought my property in 2007, l have been through a solicitor to get my deeds under trapped buyers.l have paid all the fees etc, and also paid for my deeds. Which l will now not receive, as Trapped buyers has been stopped. Apparently it is unconstitutional!!!
Yes, the Trapped Buyers’ law has been suspended – the government is trying to work out a solution.
As for paying for your deeds, I assume you mean paying the Property Transfer Fees (the Cyprus equivalent of the UK Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT)). You don’t pay Property Transfer Fees until the Title Deeds are available.
We are in the same position as Lional so I fully agree that this is an absolute nightmare which in my view should have been addressed years ago!
So far, I have been working for just over 15 years trying to obtain clean title deeds for myself and fellow owners at our development.
The issues preventing us from obtaining clean title deeds all relate to planning irregularities and failure on the part of the developer to do things properly. We bought our property off-plan in 2006, it was delivered late so we did not take possession until late 2008. We were keen to obtain clean title deeds having resolved our Swiss Franc mortgage issue.
Our Contract of Sale says ‘The vendors will do their utmost not delay the issue of separate title deeds’. All the while there was no Fire & Safety Regulations certificate for our development, a biological waste water system had not been constructed in accordance with the planning and building permit and there was no pool license. In addition, the Municipality had not signed off the final building certificate. Fifteen later we are still waiting to obtain clean title deeds!
When we purchased we were completely unaware of these issues. We carried out an investigation and discovered a never-ending list of horrendous failures all relating to planning irregularities Then to top it off the developer went into receivership leaving us high and dry. We complained but received no support/no sympathy whatsoever so we took matters into our hands and engaged excellent legal advice. We clubbed together building a fund to pay for the planning infringements whilst the developer remained unpunished. It will cost a lot to put right his failures but at least our properties will be worth their full commercial value and if sold we don’t pass on the problems to others.
The owners at our development can now see light at the end of the tunnel but it has taken a lot of time, effort and perseverance. When I started this epic journey, I was a young man, now I’m a grandfather!
Many issues still rile me, top of the list are:
? Why was the developer allowed to get away with it? The developer did the same thing at several others developments all in the same area but was not stopped.
? Why did the lawyer not pick up these fundamentally irregularities before we purchased? Routine checks should have been carried out and if I had known about the problems I would not have signed on the dotted line.
? Why was the developer allowed to sell when a final building certificate had not been granted on the development? Once he got his money there was no turning back for him.
Finally, I have to disagree with Quesnel. The price I paid was for a property with title deeds and an approved waste water system. More recently we checked the valuation of the property at the time of purchase and found we had paid over the odds!
Why anyone would purchase a property without a 100% clean and Kosher title deed I will never understand. It is the most expensive purchase in your whole life. Do your due dilligence, or end up out of pocket and suffer stress forc decades. Developers & ‘their’ lawers will and have lied through their teeth to get your 500K.
Can we set a group for all buyers for the said developer so we can all apply together?
Is there a good solicitor capable of representing all the owners of all these complex’s built by this developer?
There’s no hope unless we all pull together.
It appears that in the septic isle, developers, lawyers / solicitors, architects and surveyors are protected species, but property buyers are fair game for every scam available in the book.
My advice is DON’T BUY PROPERTY IN CYPRUS!
THIS SHOULD READ MY DEVELOPER NOT MY LAWYER My building had already been constructed and I had many meetings with my lawyer about my deeds and he told me on each occasion that everything was OK, but the land registry had a backlog.
Thank you Lionel – I’ve corrected the article. Have you contacted the Cyprus Mail who first published your letter?
We are in the same situation in our complex in Paralimni. We mortgaged through BOC, swiss ( another con ) off plan in 2007 no one has managed to get title deeds, and the owner/developer went bankrupt.
Vous oubliez de dire que les personnes qui achètent ces propriétés sans titres de propriété les achètent moins cher que si elles les avaient. C’est le “prix du risque” !
Approximate translation “You forget to mention that people who buy these properties without title deeds buy them for less than they would if they had titles. It’s the ‘price of risk’!”
People by properties off-plan long before Title Deeds are issued. They do not pay less for these properties and in the vast majority of cases, they pay more.
There are risks involved in buying a property without its all-important deed, but some people are either ignorant of the risks or are prepared to accept them. (I would not accept the risk and would not buy a property unless it had a ‘clean’ Title Deed.)
In recent times, buyers are more aware of the corruption, opacity and dysfunction that rages in Greek Cyprus. There are many who purchased back in the mid-2000’s who hadn’t realised this reality, thinking the EU was more than a mirage, who paid top-whack and got conned by the GCs.