The Minister of Interior has announced that it is now possible to obtain a Certificate of Title much faster. A series of reforms in the workflows of the Land Registry and other departments will reduce the waiting time for obtaining a Certificate of Title from three years to three months.
At a seminar of the Cyprus Land Development and Construction Business Association, the Minister of Interior, Konstantinos Ioannou, announced that a new process for the examination and issuance of title deeds (known in Cyprus as “kochani”) has been in effect since January 2. The Minister noted that creating favorable conditions for the development of the construction business is one of the government’s priorities.
Previously, the average time from filing an application to receiving a Certificate of Title was from one to three years, and sometimes even longer. The Ministry of Interior has made a number of changes and simplifications to the application review process, and now cases should take between one and three months to be considered.
The work of the Department of Land Cadastre and the Department of Town Planning has been reformed. Urban and spatial planning processes have been simplified. The process of submitting applications for the division of land plots for the creation of separate titles for houses and other objects has undergone important changes.
The priority is now the external demarcation of the boundaries of plots before their division into separate units. This is done to avoid the frequently occurring problem of violating the boundaries of a neighboring plot during the construction of a building.
In addition, the Ministry has taken steps to ensure that applicants fill out the title acquisition documents correctly and in full immediately. This will avoid the need to waste time requesting additional information from landowners, which previously significantly delayed the processing of applications.
Another change is the use of private licensed inspectors for on-site inspections and for the division of plots. Citizens can now contact a private inspector directly, which relieves the workload of the permanent staff of the Land Registry Department and reduces the processing time for applications.
