23.11.2022
Presented by Konstantinos Petrides, the Sale and Purchase of Real Estate Act 2022 aims to ensure that the transfer of any property is carried out immediately and as soon as the buyer has fulfilled his contractual obligations.
The goal of the bill is to avoid thousands of homeowners being left without title deeds despite having paid in full for their property because developers had mortgages on the property.
He added that this has a triple impact, ensuring that the project is completed, the mortgage is settled and buyers have no problem getting title to their property.
According to Mr. Petridis, this is the only way to ensure that all the buyer’s money is used for the project for which the buyer pays his money, and we will no longer have the phenomenon of projects in progress, as in the past, the buyers/consumers themselves are victims.
“This is exactly what they do in countries with modern legislation,” he said, recalling that the issue of the transfer of documents confirming the ownership of real estate is an important milestone in the Recovery and Resilience Plan of the Republic of Cyprus (RRP) in the reform “Strategy to eliminate shortcomings of the system of property rights”.
He added that the procedure is in line with the directive of the Central Bank of Cyprus and the legislation of other countries.
Parliament passed legislation in 2015 to help thousands of owners who paid their property in full but didn’t receive title deeds because the developers had their own mortgages on the property.
The head of the land registry was given the power to release, remove, transfer and cancel mortgages and or other encumbrances, as the case may be and under certain conditions, as the state sought to resolve the confusion with title documents.
In July 2018, banks and legislators entered into a gentleman’s agreement to address this issue. In exchange for MPs to pass legislation to make it easier for banks to collect dues, the banks’ association agreed to raise no objection to the issue of buyers trapped without title deeds if the deal was done in good faith.
The protection given to trapped property buyers last year was extended until the end of 2022.
