A RECENT mini-poll conducted by the on-line Cyprus Property News magazine revealed that 93 percent of the 1,317 readers who voted said that they would not buy a property in Cyprus that did not have its Title Deed.
This result is hardly surprising given the number of problems and the amount of bad publicity resulting from the Island’s Title Deed fiasco.
In the statement he issued in 2009, Interior Minister Neoclis Sylikiotis said that the government’s policy was to introduce “effective and comprehensive practices for solving this problem” and that its goal was to issue “some 20,000 Title Deeds by mid 2010″.
Two and a half years later, nothing has changed – and by mid-2010 a mere 10,701 Title Deeds had been transferred, slightly more than half the government’s stated target.
UK MPs and MEPs have been deluged with letters from disgruntled buyers and the EU has been asking some serious questions of Cyprus, which incidentally will take over the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union in the second half of next year.
Many of the problems have been reported by the Island’s English-language press and the UK media. A team from ITV, the UK’s largest independent terrestrial TV broadcaster, spent a week on the island recently recording material for their upcoming ‘Homes from Hell’ series; they are planning a second visit in February to record more material for a second one-hour episode.
But despite the bad publicity, the government appears impotent being either unable or unwilling to resolve the Title Deed issues and restore the Island’s tarnished reputation and overseas investor confidence.