Claims that foreign buyers are dominating Cyprus’ property market may be overstated, with non-EU nationals accounting for just over a quarter of sales and their share actually declining, according to an analysis by Fiona Mullen, director of Sapienta Economics.
Non-EU nationals represented 26.5% of property contracts of sale in 2025, down from 31.7% in 2023, whilst Cypriots accounted for 59.5% of purchases last year, Mullen found.
“A great deal of fuss has been made about foreign sales because people have just looked at the rising number of foreign buyers, and not done the mind-numbing task of pulling out numbers from separate PDF files to compare foreigners with Cypriot sales,” Mullen wrote. “Guess what? Cypriot sales have also been rising, so the proportions have not changed that much.”
Sales to Cypriots nearly doubled from 4,875 in 2018 to 10,859 in 2025, outpacing the increase in non-EU purchases from 2,939 to 4,809 over the same period.
Mullen criticised a September report by Cyprus’ audit office, which speculated that foreign ownership might be higher due to purchases through Cyprus-registered companies. “It’s an audit office. Without any hard evidence it should not be speculating at all,” she wrote.
She recommended that parliament use existing ultimate beneficial owner records to provide anonymised nationality data to the land registry. “Only then shall we have the full picture and parliament can decide if anything needs to be done about it,” Mullen said.
However, recent Cystat data on residential properties showed that in most cities except Nicosia, sales to foreigners exceed those to Cypriots, with non-Cypriots paying more per square metre. “In the end, this pushes up prices for everyone,” Mullen wrote.
She warned that housing affordability remains a critical political issue. “We have an ageing cohort that is asset-rich and doesn’t want to pay more tax, and a smaller cohort that cannot afford to buy houses, getting angrier by the day,” she wrote, citing economist David McWilliams’ warning of a “ticking time-bomb” that could fuel support for anti-democratic movements.
© In-Cyprus.com
