Title deeds poses a twin-edged sword

There was a legal inaccuracy in a recent report about A&G’s forthcoming liquidation when your reporter wrote that all owners were now unsecured creditors.

Purchasers of real estate from A&G must examine their legal position carefully. Some may be secured and protected from losing their properties, others secured but behind a bank’s priority claim and others may be unsecured being most at risk.

Accelerating the conversion at the District Lands Office of contingent property rights (there is no such thing as a title deed in Cypriot law as far as I can tell) is a double-edged sword for the Cypriot government.

On the one hand, registration of ownership represents the taxable event requiring payment of stamp duty/transfer tax. At between three to eight per cent of the contractual consideration, any acceleration would boost significantly and immediately the treasury’s coffers and surprise one or two owners into the bargain who had either forgotten about it or never realised it existed.

On the other hand, the banks would demand new security from the developers which may place inordinate and unfavourable pressure on the banking system and the macro-economy.

This is an invidious challenge but nevertheless the time’s come for the government to grasp the nettle restoring Cyprus’ international reputation which suffers as a result of the registration back log.

No one’s suggesting that come the year’s end they’ll not be in need of the money, courtesy of Cypriot and foreign owner alike.

MA Bruce-Smith,
London

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.