The European Commission has once again recommended that Cyprus takes measures to ensure reliable and swift systems for the issuance of Title Deeds & speed the reduction of non-performing loans.
The Limassol District Court has upheld the 'trapped buyers' law overturning previous district court rulings in favour of banks that blocked Title Deeds being issued to some 70,000 trapped buyers.
Solutions to the Title Deed mess resulting from court decisions declaring that the 'Trapped Buyers' law is unconstitutional will be the subject of a meeting between all parties on 16th June.
The Limassol and Paphos District Courts in Cyprus have both ruled that the trapped buyers' law, which enabled those duped into buying property built on mortgaged land to get their Title Deeds, is unconstitutional.
Cyprus banks are blocking trapped property buyers getting Title Deeds, while in Spain the Supreme Court has ruled that the banks must refund money to purchasers whose homes were never completed.
A number of banks have obtained temporary court orders preventing people who bought property in Cyprus from receiving Title Deeds under the provisions of 'trapped buyers' law claiming they knew nothing about the sale.
The European Commission has issued Cyprus with a number of recommendations to speed the issuance of Title Deeds, reduce NPLs, eliminate impediments in the insolvency and foreclosure frameworks, etc.
The solution to the Gordian Knot is simple, no property transaction without a Title Deed should be legal – and a state that respected the rights of its citizens would not have waited for a solution to be imposed by the Troika.
Although the 'hidden mortgages' bill is a positive step in the right direction, more needs to be done to resolve the issue of trapped buyers to enable those who have paid for their property to obtain its Title Deed.
As the Cyprus Property Action Group discovered much of the blame for the Title Deed scandal rests with conveyancing lawyers whose duplicity earned them their designation as one of the largest criminal classes in Cyprus.
Although MPs voted though amendments preventing banks from repossessing homes that people have paid for, home buyers will still be unable to secure their Title Deeds until the developers debts have been repaid.
A free lecture on the subject of efforts being made to accelerate the issuance of Title Deeds will be held in Paphos on 4th December; the lecture will be followed by an open discussion.
There are still 39,490 Title Deeds that have not been transferred and it appears that there are many purchasers who are unable or unwilling to pay the unreasonably high property transfer fees.
Many people wonder why it takes so long for Title Deeds to be issued by District Lands Offices; here is an article contributed by one of our regular readers explaining the process in detail.
Although a figure of 130,000 has often been quoted for the number of properties waiting to be issued with Title Deeds, this was based on statistics published by the Department of Lands and Surveys in 2008.
Update - 13 February. Receivers acting for the Alpha Bank are threatening to sell the homes of people who purchased property from defunct developer unless those people pay off the developer's defaulted mortgages, their taxes and other creditors.
The Department of Lands and Surveys has published its second set of statistics relating to one of the provisions agreed between Cyprus and the troika in the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
Liquidators appointed to handle six of the eight companies comprising the Froiber Group has completed the work necessary to get Title Deeds issued for eight apartment buildings; efforts are concentrated on the rest.
Nothing will happen to resolve the Title Deed fiasco unless President Anastasiades grasps the importance of this problem which, with the exception of various vacuous promised, his predecessors have ignored.
