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.