THE increasing number of public notices issued in the local press regarding banks’ claims against mortgage defaulters, is worrying and calls for the immediate establishment of a Property Commissioner in Cyprus.
There is no doubt that any political party in power or the opposition would have no difficulty to find people to fill the post. Naturally, they would have to be the ‘right’ people for the job and not just some party has-been who did not make it on the candidate list.
The Commissioner would need to have executive powers, just like the regulators of certain sectors of vital economic activity (telecoms, post, transport, broadcast), but to learn from the mistakes of establishing the Environment Commissioner, a crucial office which has been undermined by the present and past administrations as it has insufficient staff to deal with the huge workload of legislative changes and inter-ministerial coordination.
One of the main issues that the Property Commissioner would undertake would be to push the relevant government departments or parliament to enact the much-delayed laws on the dreaded Title Deeds, but it would also monitor the situation with lax mortgage facilities provided to buyers with a poor credit history, simply to keep the property developers afloat.
The problem now is that the Ministry of Interior throws its hands up in the air saying it passed the proposed bills to parliament and could do nothing more, while the MPs say it is all delayed at other government departments or draft legislations are inefficient.
Up to now, banks have been acting against developers who default on their mortgages and then extending the action to individual buyers (who had no involvement in the mortgage) instead of going after the developer’s guarantors which logically, legally and ethically they should do.
The new twist, inferred from the latest notices in the newspapers, is that when an individual buyer defaults on his own mortgage the banks are now going after the developer as well! The individual buyer will then simply say “go after the developer’s guarantor, not me”.
Either way, not a good advertisement for the Cyprus property market or the banks.
