Some 30,000 properties in Cyprus may never receive a title deed because of huge obstacles to issuing them.
Specifically, some 23,000 property owners who are victims of insolvent land developers have not even submitted an application for the procedure of title issuance to begin in accordance with relevant legislation.
Land Registry officers believe the non-submission of applications is mainly because property owners are not sufficiently informed about the relevant procedure.
On the other hand, 7,862 property owners who have submitted an application cannot go through the process because there are no title deeds for the specific land development. This mainly applies to apartment blocks.
Data tabled before parliament shows that a total of 17,175 applications have been submitted by trapped property owners. Of these, 9,313 have a separate property title deed and 7,862 are “problematic ones” for which there are no separate deeds.
Yesterday, the House Legal Affairs Committee discussed further a law proposal by opposition parties that essentially tries to overcome unconstitutional issues that keep property owners trapped.
The law proposal will be discussed on May 2 so that the matter goes to plenum on May 10, the last before the European elections.
In 2015, parliament passed a law aimed at helping thousands of owners who had paid for their properties in full but had not been issued with their title deeds because the developers had their own mortgages on the properties.
However, banks contested the law and won rulings that it was unconstitutional.
This mainly grants the land registry director the authority to exempt, eliminate, transfer and cancel mortgages and or other encumbrances, depending on the case and under certain conditions, as the state sought to sort out the Title Deed mess.
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