Cyprus Property Forum for Buyers, Sellers & Investors

I hope someone can give me a little info!
About 3.1/2 years ago we bought a house, on a plot of under 6oo.sq.m. Our builder had bought 1/2 of this plot the other 1/2 having been bought & built on several years before, our builder then built 2 houses, mine & my neighbours, we registered at the land registery, and paid for & awaited our deeds, being told everything was in order no probs!
We have now found out, The plans for the 2 houses we agreed & signed by the 1st house owner, however during the build the placement of one of the cess pits was moved by about a meter (closer to their house) and the 1st house owner complained, our builder was told to stop building until it had been sorted out! health & saftey were called in and said it would be ok, our builder was then told to submit new plans with the changes, which he did and this was approved, houses built and sold, 3 years later we are wondering why we haven't received our deeds? & now find out that the 1st house owner had again complained, it went to the ombusman (3 of them) 2 of which said no probs the 3rd had said that there are no problems but he didnt get the 1st house owner to sign the 2nd set of plans & maybe he should have.. and this is where we have stayed, the 1st house owner still says they will never sign something that they do not agree with, even if it takes the next 2000 years & we will never get our deeds! the land hasn't even been split! they wont sign!. the builder says he has done everything he was told, I did say to him that by law he must supply the final cert of approval, he is trying to find out what can be done, but he's already sold us the houses!

Hi sofia21 and welcome to the forum,

I'm afraid that you will have to get a decent lawyer to help you on this - I don't know how this situation can be resolved.

The problem has arisen because not everyone agreed to the changes and I suspect that 1st house owner has a 50% share in the the overall plot on which the three houses have been built. If you are a part owner of the plot and you wish to make any changes, then you must get the agreement of all the part owners before it can go ahead. But in your case this didn't happen.

I am surprised that the Planning Authorities did not pick up this problem when the developer applied for planning permission. They should have checked that everyone had agreed to the changes and that all the plans, etc had been signed by all parties concerned.

One thing you (and your neighbour) may be able to do is to get yourselves registered on the Title Deed as each having a 25% share in the plot. This will protect your interests while a lawyer sorts the mess out for you.

(By the way, if your developer had sub-divided the land into individual plots and got their Title Deeds issued before he started building you and your neighbours' house, you wouldn't have this problem).

Regards,

Thanks for that Nigel,
At the moment we are waiting to see if the builder can get it sorted, He says he has done everthing he was asked, It was the planning dept that told him to put the 2nd lot of plans & they would pass them which they did. yes the 1st house owner has 50% our neighbour & us have 1/4 shares we are on the land registery & we do have land deeds to say we have these shares, apparently if a plot is under 600.sq.m all the building has to be finished and everyone has to sign before it can be split..we were not told of this when we bought, the builder just told us he had bought the land. we either assumed or he told us it was already split as it didnt belong to the 1st house owner previously either. They inturn have told me theirs is split? and they have their FCA for their house which was built about 10 years ago & can get their deeds whenever they want!..which I doubt!