A LARGE number of property owners will soon have their much-desired Title Deeds, as authorities launch procedures to implement the recently passed town-planning amnesty laws.
The head of the Land Registry Office, Andreas Christodoulou, yesterday announced that his department was expected to conclude an evaluation on a list of properties by the end of this month, which will allow owners of properties with small discrepancies to acquire their deeds.
“We will move forward with evaluating the value of the properties in each area, so that they can be published in the order that will be issued by the Interior Minister,” said Christodoulou.
“We will submit our evaluations per area by the end of May and based on the law that was recently passed by parliament, the Interior Minister will issue an order, which will determine the amounts that each person will be called to pay, depending on the discrepancy,” he explained.
For the first six months after the order has been issued, applications for town-planning amnesty will be submitted by property owners who are facing problems having their Title Deeds issued.
Specially appointed committees will examine each application and depending on the discrepancy, they will determine the price that will have to be paid by the applicant to have deeds issued.
According to Christodoulou, there are currently over 120,000 properties without deeds – belonging to local as well as foreign buyers – while on average, around 10,500 new applications for Title Deeds are submitted each year.
Editor comment
THIS is excellent news for those who are unable to obtain Title Deeds due to minor planning infringements, but questions remain on the length of time it will take the authorities to issue the deeds.
In 2010, the Land Registries issued and transferred Title Deeds for a total of 13,701 properties. This was an improvement on the 2009 figure of 11,444.
Assuming that the productivity of the Land Registries and other departments involved in the process of producing Title Deeds can be increased so that 20,000 a year can be transferred and the figure of 10,500 new applications each year remains constant, it is going to take around 12 years to clear the backlog.
Moreover, figures have yet to published on how many deeds are held up due to planning infringements and how many are held up due to more serious problems, such as developer mortgages.