The process has begun to look like a “bad taste prank”. sale of residence in our country, after the developments of the last few weeks. The characterization results from the fact that the very effort that is being made, with specific legislative and regulatory interventions, to reduce the time required and the bureaucracy that accompanies every act of purchase and sale property, has caused notaries to refrain from their duties (except for the drafting of pre-contracts), a move that has created a “heart attack” in the real estate market and indeed at the worst possible time. Traditionally, the last month of the year is also the most dynamic in terms of the completion of sales contracts, essentially constituting the escalation of months of efforts by sellers and buyers in order to gather the dozens of required documents that accompany each transaction.
In a first reaction to this negative development, its president Association of Realtors of Athens-Attica, Lefteris Potamianos, commented that refraining from notarizing home sales can have disastrous results for many sellers. “There are people who, if they don’t transfer their property, may be seized by a fund, because the payment deadlines will not have been met.
There are also people who sell because they have to cover medical expenses or other serious issues (eg debts etc.)”. Also, as Mr. Potamianos adds, “in addition to the above, we are in a period before the holidays and the end of the year, when traditionally most contracts are signed and expenses, salaries and other obligations must be paid by the companies involved. In addition to all this, of course, what has been endured for months by those who have struggled for so long to issue the documents they need to sign at the last minute and after they have already paid debts, the state and engineers, are asked to wait some more, until the abstinence ends ».
Seven different documents are needed, which should display the same area, which is almost impossible.
Of course, the moratorium will expire at some point, perhaps in the early days of 2024. But it is only the “tip of the iceberg” when it comes to the tortuous process of selling a home. As explained by Mr. Paradise Armyits president Panhellenic Federation of Property Owners (POMIDA), “today there are seven different documents, which should show an identical area, inevitably. It’s about her certificate of non-debt TAP (Real Estate Tax), the title deedthe horizontal ownership deedthe plan of the buildingthe electronic building IDthe cadastral excerpt and the certificate of non-debt ENFIA». If in any of these sq.m. otherwise, the seller should start a “marathon” of correction. Even worse, if for some reason a mistake has been made in the sq.m. in the past (e.g. in the initial establishment of a property horizon), it will have to go through a costly and mostly time-consuming process of changes to all other documents as well. In fact, this is done even if the deviation is very small.
Obviously, no one doubts that order should finally be brought to the “chaos” of the country’s real estate. This was also the great “promise” of the land registration process. However, this has today developed into a “nightmare” for thousands of property owners and sellers, due to the mistakes that have been made in the property records, with the responsibility of both the owners themselves and the contractors who undertook the land registry work. The situation was worsened by the highly bureaucratic process of correcting these mistakes, but also by the most recent legislation requiring sellers to prepare an electronic building identity. The building identity acts as a “broom”, which aims to correct all the mistakes that have been made in the part of recording the characteristics of the properties, wherever they have been made, e.g. in the recommendations of horizontal properties, floor plans, building permits, land registry, etc.
Although correct in conception, however, the building identity is called upon to be applied without critical steps having been taken. As explained by engineers who have taken on the difficult role, on the one hand of correcting previous mistakes and on the other of “educating” citizens, the implementation of the building identity, without having digitized the contracts that are in the mortgage registers and even more so, nor the building permits that are in in urban planning, it makes the whole process exponentially more difficult, generating new delays.
Delays even after signing the contracts
In practice, a home sale can “stumble” dozens of times until it is completed, even if it is considered a relatively simple case, as serious delays can occur even after the sale is completed. If e.g. there is an encumbrance on the property, which will be removed through the sale (e.g. some loan balance), certificates must be granted by the creditor bank, to the buyer or his bank (if he is being loaned for the purchase of the property), in then the new encumbrance should be registered (at the competent magistrate’s court), in the presence of lawyers (of the bank and the buyer) and of course the pre-notification should also be removed.
These routine steps alone can take even more than two months to complete (eg if there is no date available at the local magistrates’ court, or as lawyers have recently been off duty), even though they are considered simple cases. In fact, if the debt has now passed to the control of a debt management company (through a fund), the waiting time increases exponentially.
Real estate sources report that it is extremely difficult to cooperate with these companies, as the granting of simple documents, such as e.g. a proof of balance, a proof of intent to cancel a pre-note, or a simple proof of payment, often require months of waiting.
In some municipalities it takes months to issue the contract transfer certificate.
However, serious delays are also observed at the stage of transferring the contract, in case the property is located in an area where the competent land office operates with problems. These are due to the two-year and ongoing process of transforming mortgage offices into land registry offices.
This has resulted, in several cases, in the merging of offices of various regions into a new, large office (e.g., the Athens mortgage office also includes areas such as Zografou), while at the same time many employees left and were absorbed into various services of the Justice. Thus, even today, as market professionals complain, there are many months of delays for the transfer of a contract. Without this certificate, a sale cannot be completed, as it cannot be registered e.g. note, in case the purchase is made with a loan.
As noted by the notaries, “the notaries and the paper contract are not responsible for the queues and delays at the land registry offices, but the dramatic understaffing of the land registry offices, with the responsibility of the state and the flawed, as it turns out, work of the land registry, with responsibility of course of the relevant contractors, since cadastral bases have been formed with countless errors and omissions”.
Piecemeal measures, without a unified plan, that will be implemented over time
The successive interventions of various governments during the last decades in the real estate market, without a single and coherent plan to rationalize its operation, to be implemented at the same time and not over decades, is the main reason why buying and selling has today has become an extremely painful process for all involved, both sellers and buyers, as well as the professionals involved. The last long-awaited package of measures, which come to offer “breathing”, was voted a few days ago and their implementation will soon begin. These include solutions both at the stage that precedes the sale, and at the one that follows, that is, the transfer of the sale to the respective land office.
Remove TAP
In this context, the abolition of the mandatory presentation of a certificate of non-debt TAP, through the establishment of a procedure for identifying and collecting any debts, stands out. This will be done by notifying the relevant municipality of each deed of transfer from the land registry, so that they can then calculate any debts (based on the listed square meters of the property).
This is a particularly critical step, as many municipalities had established a highly bureaucratic procedure for granting said certificate, which required even two months until it was completed. Other municipalities issued the certificates electronically and on the same day (e.g. Athens) and then calculated and charged any additional debts.
Also, the multiple presentation of an excerpt of a cadastral diagram (AKD) was abolished in case of divided ownership of texts within the same parcel of land, while in case of digital submission of an application, the body itself (that is, the cadastral registry) will proceed to attach a copy of the cadastral diagram.
Even more important are the interventions at the stage of the transfer of real rights, as the process of correcting the numerous obvious errors in the cadastral records is expanded and facilitated, even without the mandatory express consent of the State. In fact, “the cadastral register is given the possibility to define categories of applications, in which the correction will be mandatory, in order to limit the suffering of citizens from their rejection by the heads of the cadastral offices”, as noted by Mr. Paradias in a related his intervention. The provision of the possibility of transferring horizontal properties, even in excess of a thousand millimeters, is considered a particularly positive step for the facilitation of buying and selling, a very common mistake in transactions involving apartments.
What are the industry bodies asking for?
Market executives also mention a series of measures that should be followed, certainly in addition to the ambitious programs that are already “running” for the digitization of town planning and mortgage repositories, with the assistance of funds from the Recovery Fund.
Until these projects are completed, industry bodies note the need to provide contracting parties with the ability to unilaterally correct obvious errors in their title deeds and the ability for co-owners of apartment buildings to amend the description of their properties in deeds establishing horizontal ownership, in accordance with the building identity of each property so that the many thousands of owners across the country can transfer them. It is recalled that the application of the building identity has brought to the surface decades of pathologies, complicating any purchase and sale, as long as there are surface differences (even 2-3 sq.m.) between the current state of the property and that described in previous documents, when not there was the same strict regime as today.
