Title deeds for house separation
Posted: 02 Dec 2020 10:05
Hello everyone! We have encountered an extremely strange problem and I hope someone in there is able to help us/confirm or deny something which we fail to understand so far. In 2018 we (a family couple of non-eu citizens but residents of Cyprus for 7+ years) tried to buy a certain property with mortgage. The property we wanted to buy had some title deed issues though: this is a plot with a 2-families house build on it. I will post a plan here: https://i.imgur.com/X7kdEZ7.png As you can see, it's extremely typical plan for Cyprus, you can see these houses here and there, at least in Limassol.
There were title deeds issued for the land, 1/2 share for one family, 1/2 share for another family. They have applied to get title deeds for the house AND to separate a land and the house to two separate plots/titles, left side and right side. They have got their final approval for the house so everything seemed to be okay. We have rented the property and decided to wait until the proper title is issued before we buy it.
However, the architect responsible for the plans has reported the issue I need some help with: apparently land registry has refused to separate the title for the houses! As you can see on the plan above, two houses share a common wall in the middle which, according to the land registry and the architect makes the title separation (and the issuing of one title for the left part and one title for the right part) not possible, with awkward logic like "what if one title owner decides to demolish this wall leaving another house without it". To me, the common wall between two properties should never be a reason to avoid separate title issuance, there are a ton of houses like this in Cyprus and despite being told all of them are shared title, I find it hard to believe. Especially since I am sure every apartment building has flats with shared walls as well of course. The architect fails to explain the issue in more details, plans a visit to a municipality to get clearer picture (and is unable to do so because they cannot make an appointment thanks to the pandemic), say if they still refuse to separate the title they will bring a case to the court (which is essentially a dead end to us given how long does it take).
The architect also refers this kind of separation refused by land registry as "vertical" but cannot explain properly what does it mean, they also say land registry can do a "horizontal" separation which again is something I don't get haha. We communicate via phone and it's quite hard given some their side issues.
Could someone please tell me if the issue described is really common in Cyprus? What's the vertical and horizontal separation they mention? At this point after patiently paying our rent for an unfurnished apartment for 2 years I think we are being basically dropped to a carrot and stick scenario so they can keep us renting as much as they could before they look for someone else like us. We have looked for legal advice before we learned about this "common wall" separation issue but the only thing we've been told was "I advise you to look for another property" without any additional reasoning. I really hope it's possible for us to get the clearer picture here before we are forced to go to the lawyer again. Thank you very much in advance!
There were title deeds issued for the land, 1/2 share for one family, 1/2 share for another family. They have applied to get title deeds for the house AND to separate a land and the house to two separate plots/titles, left side and right side. They have got their final approval for the house so everything seemed to be okay. We have rented the property and decided to wait until the proper title is issued before we buy it.
However, the architect responsible for the plans has reported the issue I need some help with: apparently land registry has refused to separate the title for the houses! As you can see on the plan above, two houses share a common wall in the middle which, according to the land registry and the architect makes the title separation (and the issuing of one title for the left part and one title for the right part) not possible, with awkward logic like "what if one title owner decides to demolish this wall leaving another house without it". To me, the common wall between two properties should never be a reason to avoid separate title issuance, there are a ton of houses like this in Cyprus and despite being told all of them are shared title, I find it hard to believe. Especially since I am sure every apartment building has flats with shared walls as well of course. The architect fails to explain the issue in more details, plans a visit to a municipality to get clearer picture (and is unable to do so because they cannot make an appointment thanks to the pandemic), say if they still refuse to separate the title they will bring a case to the court (which is essentially a dead end to us given how long does it take).
The architect also refers this kind of separation refused by land registry as "vertical" but cannot explain properly what does it mean, they also say land registry can do a "horizontal" separation which again is something I don't get haha. We communicate via phone and it's quite hard given some their side issues.
Could someone please tell me if the issue described is really common in Cyprus? What's the vertical and horizontal separation they mention? At this point after patiently paying our rent for an unfurnished apartment for 2 years I think we are being basically dropped to a carrot and stick scenario so they can keep us renting as much as they could before they look for someone else like us. We have looked for legal advice before we learned about this "common wall" separation issue but the only thing we've been told was "I advise you to look for another property" without any additional reasoning. I really hope it's possible for us to get the clearer picture here before we are forced to go to the lawyer again. Thank you very much in advance!