A law designed to help thousands of ‘trapped buyers’ get a title deed on their property which they have paid for in full was passed by the House plenum on Thursday as the government hailed the development.

“Today’s development”, the interior ministry said, “provides a solution for 9,497 trapped buyers to become disentangled from the deadlock, as their applications [to obtain a title deed] had remained in limbo following the court decision of June 2024…”

Passed by unanimous vote, the law aims to “restore protection to so-called ‘trapped buyers’, that is to say, persons who had paid up the price of an immovable property, without however becoming the owners due to the existence of encumbrances or other prohibitions that burden the seller”.

In remarks on the House floor, Disy MP Fotini Tsiridou said passage of the legislation “crowns a long and persistent effort to lift a blatant injustice against thousands of people”.

For his part, Akel’s Aristos Damianou commented that the previous law had functioned effectively for ten years until it was deemed unconstitutional in 2024.

Even though the new law is “not perfect”, he added, it would benefit an estimated 3,000 people at least.

However, cautioned Damianou, the endeavour to help ‘trapped buyers’ does not end here.

The need to re-tweak the law came about after a Supreme Court ruling in a civil case delivered on June 20 last year. Parts of the ruling had it made it impossible for ‘trapped buyers’ to receive a title deed if they had purchased a property prior to the coming into force of the court judgement.

A key provision in the new law passed on Thursday concerns cases where lenders or other entities have placed encumbrances or prohibitions on a property and “refuse unfairly and unjustifiably” to consent to transfer of the title deed despite the buyer having paid up in full.

In these cases, the required consent may now be substituted by a court order, filed to the director of the Department of Lands and Surveys.

Where a lender refuses to consent to a title deed transfer, a ‘trapped buyer’ has 45 days in which to petition a court for such an order.

Once such a petition is filed, any other pending process regarding the property is suspended until the court order has been issued.

The issue concerns thousands of owners who had paid for their properties in full but had not been issued with their title deeds because the developers had mortgages on the properties.

Since developers’ land and buildings are counted as assets that need to be offset against their debt to banks, this gave banks a claim on properties that had been mortgaged by developers.

Explaining what will happen with property cases with prior encumbrances, the ministry said that now an individual or legal entity, holding the encumbrance, must furnish a written consent.

Once this written consent is secured, the director of the registry will be able to cancel the encumbrances, so that the property gets transferred in the name of the buyer, irrespective of any other subsequent encumbrances.

If banks unjustifiably refuse to provide such consent, a court order may be sought forcing the transfer of a title deed.