A very belated up date!!

Questions about living in properties with shared/common facilities
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northernbelle
Posts: 8
Joined: 11 Jul 2010 23:13

A very belated up date!!

Post by northernbelle »

This is a long awaited update to my original post “Where do you register your Management Committee” Dated 27/04/2012!!!

I have to apologise for the lengthy tome!

It’s been two long years since we started on this debacle, farce, confused state of affairs with the Paphos Land Registry, having to deal with the dumbest, laziest, ignorant and some of the most arrogant people who are excuses for humans you could ever imagine!
We are reasonably well educated people who take others as we find and are not (or weren’t) judgmental of others failings. However since embarking on the elusive task of trying to register our Management Committee/“Owners Association” with the Paphos Land Registry we have come up against a brick wall at every turn with employees who take pleasure in deliberately being obstructive, evasive, surly and puffing themselves up to being typical “Jobsworths” who haven’t got a clue and send you to department after department in order to wash their hands of you. They show you nothing but contempt (no matter how nice and civil you are with them) and make it blatantly obvious that they don’t like you and are not going to help you!

Do I sound bitter!! You bet your life I am, and the mere mention of the Paphos Land Registry makes my blood boil.

In April of 2012, we went to the PLR (Paphos Land Registry) to enquire “at first” how to go about registering our apartments Management Committee, as we were being ripped off by our developer on every aspect of the communal fees.
When we got there we went to the enquiry desk and were told to fill in form for the “Government Official” who is responsible for ensuring all TOR comply with Cyprus Law in cases of a dispute and who could appoint people from the apartments to form a Management Committee if the owners could not agree on who to appoint between themselves.

We asked to see this person and strangely they told us what floor it was on but not his office number. We made our way up to the floor and asked a couple of people who sent us to another floor and another office (Wrong advice) we went back to the original floor and someone from an office asked us if they could help!!!, we explained who we were there to see and was told where this persons office was (name withheld for obvious reasons). We waited outside his door which was ajar as the office was empty, we asked the person in the next office when he would likely return and were told soon (in a gruff abrupt manner!).

We waited maybe 5 minutes before the “Government Official” came back. We explained that we wanted to register a Management Committee to take over the running of the communal affairs and had a copy of the Rules and Regulations and had also appointed our own Chairman, Finance officer and Secretary with the agreement from 80% of the apartment owners.
We told him that we had had our Terms of Reference checked over by our Lawyer who advised us to carry out the procedure to the letter by announcing our first committee meeting, by posting the details around the complex in view and asking anyone who couldn’t attend to fill in proxy voting forms to allow the committee or the one or two who could attend, put their votes and suggestions forward to be considered.

My husband and one of the other owners had gone to the electricity board and the water board to get the accounts changed over to them and open up a joint bank account with both having equal rights to the account and having transparent paying in and paying out details open to all three member of the Management Committee.

(I must say at this point, that after taking over the electricity and water accounts we could see how much “Profit” the developer had made from all of the owners for electricity and water and other charges!! We have since saved ourselves a fortune and been able to do a lot of maintenance work the developer failed to do using these funds!)

The Official said as long as we comply with Cyprus Laws and their Rules and Regulations regarding “Jointly Owned Buildings” we didn’t have to register, and seeing that we had already formed our own Management Committee we didn’t need him as he was only there to appoint a Committee if we couldn’t agree ourselves.
He also said the management Committee’s change all the time so the PLR wouldn’t have time to see different people who wanted to register their MC.

Well, we came away with a sense of relief and that was the end of the matter! How wrong could we be!

We were advised from another source that we needed to register the “Owners Association” if we wanted to start legal proceedings against those who weren’t paying their communal maintenance fees, we needed to be legally registered!
So the ordeal of going back to the PLR started all over again. They seemed to think that the management Committee and the Owners Association were one and the same thing and insisted it was called the “Management Committee” even though we told them we had clarified it with their “Government Official”! We were once more sent on a merry-go-round of different people telling us different things.
We had to pay for a “pink slip” requesting a search for the list (I think it was 20 euros for the request) of everyone who owned apartments and who had Title Deeds which we got from the PLR for a charge of 15 euros per apartment.

Once we got them, we again went to the PLR where we were told we had to first register our “Management Committee”!!!!! We were going round in circles with them so we bit the bullet and got our lawyer to deal with it with the consent of the “paying owners”.
Our lawyer sent our registration form to the PLR before the economic crash and after many times contacting our lawyer about the progress of our registration, we were suddenly told that because of the “Troika” the Land Registry would be concentrating on that and were not carrying out any work on “other” matters!
Last year, we asked our lawyer for all the details about who was dealing with the matter, dates of each time the PLR was contacted etc and their response.

When we were over last year, I personally went to speak to these people who were in charge of our case and I felt totally demoralised and frustrated at their whole attitude concerning this matter. I was at all times civil but put every point to him about time scales what we had done to get this far and what actions had to be taken to resolve this. He had our records in front of him and said it just needs a stamp. When I asked if why he couldn’t just stamp it there and then, he said there were many registrations to get through and I would have to wait my turn! He then said I would have to have every owner’s power of attorney to complete the registration of our Owners Association. The guy who I saw was slouched back in his chair with a smirk on his face as if to say I am in charge here and Ill do it when I want not when you ask me to!!! These are the type of people you are dealing with!

Needless to say, we are still waiting to hear from our lawyer.

Soooo I have tried to give you a step by step account of our dealings with the PLR. We were at all times civil, even though we have had our patience tried to the limit. We never once lost our temper or sounded arrogant in our knowledge of what we needed to do. But as you can see, it didn’t account for diddly squat as these people are a law unto themselves.
It’s been an awful stressful ordeal and we have lost faith in a lot of “well meaning” people who have advised us along the way. The truth of the matter is, we don’t think anyone has clear cut knowledge of the situation.
We have a copy of the Buildings under Joint Ownership covering the responsibilities of the Management Committee with all the Rules and Regulations which we had adhered to.

Sorry for the long winded update but I felt I had to get it all down! When or “IF we hear anything soon, I will send you another update, hopefully a shorter version!!
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