Buying a property in Cyprus is possibly the largest single investment that an individual will make in the Republic. However, Cyprus has little (if any) consumer protection that buyers would normally take for granted when buying property in any other EU member state.
This lack of effective consumer protection manifests itself in many ways, including:
- Advertising designed to deceive and mislead consumers into believing their investment in the Cyprus property market is safe by employing terms such as ‘English legal system’, ‘First Quality Developers with ISO 9001’, ‘British standards’, ‘luxury properties’, ‘100% safe’, ‘guaranteed Title Deeds’ etc, etc.
Unfair contract terms requiring consumers to pay substantial cancellation fees to unscrupulous property developers should they decide to sell the property before its Title Deed, and thereby legal ownership, has been conveyanced to their name.
Consumers are sold property even though the land on which it’s built is mortgaged. This puts consumers at dire risk of financial ruin should the mortgage lender call in the loan.
Consumers are sold property that has been built illegally; without the required Planning Permissions and Building Permits.
The inordinate time lag, which is often several and occasionally tens of years, between property purchase and transfer of legal ownership exacerbates the consumer protection issues:
- It allows ruthless property developers and others to exploit consumers financially and to deny them their right to enjoy the full benefits of property ownership, including their right to sell the property they have bought to whoever they wish.
Consumers find it difficult or impossible to sell or buy resale property as the financial institutions refuse buyers mortgages unless the property in question has a Title Deed.
Maybe the Government should think seriously about taking effective action to stop these serious abuses of consumer rights before it has a situation on its hands as catastrophic to its property industry and economy as the much publicised ‘Spanish Land Grab’.
Yours faithfully,
