Illegal Building

[marc]

I am looking at a property that was build on agricultural land, 3000m2 land 250 m2 single house. There is no registration of the property on the plot according to the DLS portal. Does that mean it's an illegal building? If yes, what can be done to make this a legal building, the house was build in 1998. As a buyer Im European but not Cypriot.

[Nigel Howarth]

Hi marc and welcome to the forum.

The first thing I suggest you do is change your username as it's currently set as your email address and you may get spam.

As for the house, you'll need to check with the with the vendor to see if they had planning permission when they built the house. (Hopefully the vendor will remember the name of the architect that designed the house and/or the building contractor. The architect may have details.)

If they did have planning permission you should try and get copies of the plans and permits. (It could be the house was built, but it hasn't been inspected and added to the deed.)

If there was no planning permission, you'll need to get an architect to draw up the architectural plans and the static drawings and then submit them to see if retrospective planning & building permits can be issued.

Assuming you get planning & building permits, you'll need to get the planners to check the building and issue a 'Completion Certificate', which indicates that the house has been built according to the plans & permits issued for its construction.

Assuming you get a 'Completion Certificate', you can then take the information from the Planning Office to the Land Registry and ask them to add the house to the land deed.

It's going to cost a few thousand Euro to get plans drawn up, etc. and there's no guarantee that everything will go smoothly. But if planning & building permits have been issued, and the house can be issued with a Completion Certificate, it should (a) relatively trouble-free and (b) not too expensive.

Regards,

[Vendela]

We have looked into such properties too. But the big downside, even when it had a valid building permission, if you change something on the house, you loose the permission and have to start again, which means a lot of time going by. And then you could not get any. We left this and looked for normal houses and plots.

[Pantheman]

Nigel,

He does specify it is on agricultural land and if there are no planning permits already in place, it is more than likely he won't get them anyway, depending.

And to poster vendela: you don't necessarily lose the permit, you can re-apply to legalise the changes made as long as they are not too drastic and break any rules. I have done such a thing on my own property and am now waiting for the Final certificate.

good luck.

[Vendela]

The average Cyriot building on such a land is usually not what you want to live in. So major changes are necessary and even if you add a terrasse, a car port what ever, you have to apply new for the whole building. Usually foreigners don't have the connections to make this a swift procedure.

Also, since the EU law for sustainable buildings will be applied here too, the renovations of such a house will be very costly, to avoid renovations in the future again. Buying such a thing has limits.

When it was illegal in the first place, the chances are zero to make it happen regarding to many people, we have spoken to.