Cypriots rush to revaluate homes

Cyprus Land Registry employees are working extra hour without pay to reassess the value of some 500,000 homes, following the island’s controversial bailout deal earlier this year. Until now, the island has taxed properties based on 1980s values, with a large number of properties not even registered officially. As a result, determining a fair Immovable Property Tax is impossible for officials, making it difficult to recoup funds to help Cyprus climb out of recession.

Deputy Land Registry Directory Kleanthis Kleanthouse told Cyprus Property News that civil servants were pulling “12 hour shifts - with no overtime” to revalue all of the properties, a mammoth task that must be completed by June 2014.

The department has also been ordered to issue overdue titles for 60,000 units, in addition to valuing all state property.

The bailout, which was issued in April this year, was only secured by Cyprus through the submission of provisional Immovable Property Tax legislation. But with incomplete data, the Land Registry requested to amend the proposal at the end of June 2013 to come up with a fairer taxation sysem.

“There are whole areas in Limassol, Nicosia, and Larnaca, where houses worth millions of euros are built, which do not have a building permit at the moment and are considered plots and fields,” admitted the government at the time.

Now, the race is on to submit a new IPT proposal and complete the gargantuan challenge within the next 12 months.

“Civil servants are conscious of the problems and do whatever they can to help,” Kleanthous said. “Seeing the huge need, a lot of colleagues from all districts, have volunteered to work for at least one Saturday.”

The Land Registry currently issues 1,000 title deeds every month. That will need to increase to 3,000 if they hope to complete the task in time.