Property documents, country by country

Six documents, two countries. A Cypriot title deed costs €10 for each deed from the Department of Lands and Surveys. Below, each document is named as its own register names it, with who issues it and, more usefully, what it does not prove.

Which document matters at which moment

The vocabulary problem in both countries is the same and it is not really a translation problem. It is that two entirely different kinds of record exist everywhere in Europe, and English collapses them both into "the land registry".

The first kind describes the physical thing: where the plot is, how big it is, what has been built on it, and what the state thinks it is worth for tax. The second kind describes the legal thing: who holds what right over it, and what is charged against it. In some countries one office keeps both. In others they are separate institutions with separate histories, separate identifiers and separate opinions about the same square metres.

For a buyer the practical consequence is a sequence. Before you commit money you want the legal record, because that is where a mortgage, a court judgment or a right of way over the garden is written down. Before you agree a price you want the physical record, because that is where an area that does not match the sales particulars shows up. The two do not arrive from the same place and they very often do not agree with each other.

Below, each document is given the name its own register uses, then what it is, who issues it, what it costs where a fee is published, and the part that gets skipped everywhere else: what it does not prove.

Cyprus

The Cypriot title deed (Certificate of Registration of Immovable Property)

The instrument that records a person or company in the Cypriot register as the owner of a registered property, issued by the Department of Lands and Surveys. A copy costs €10 for each deed from the Department of Lands and Surveys.

What it does not prove is more interesting than what it does. Section 52 of the Immovable Property Law, Cap. 224 does not set out what is on it at all:

Every certificate of registration includes such particulars and is of such form as the Director shall decide.

So there is no statutory field list, and any page telling you what a Cypriot deed contains is describing practice rather than law. Section 55 does fix one thing: where land is subject to or enjoys an easement or similar right, that is entered, on the application of a person having an interest, in the Register and in the certificate of registration for that land.

The deed also does not exist for every property. On a development the unit may still sit inside a larger registration in the developer's name, and until it is separately registered there is no deed to transfer. That gap is the subject of how a Cypriot purchase works.

A search of the Cypriot register (Search Certificate of Immovable Property)

Not the deed, and not a copy of it. A Search Certificate of Immovable Property gives the ownership history of a named property over a period you specify, and it is what shows a mortgage, a court judgment registered as a memo, or a prohibition. It costs €15 per selected property from the Department of Lands and Surveys.

Who may ask is set by section 51A(2) of Cap. 224, and the list is wider than most English-language pages report. It includes the owner and their successors, the holder of any right or interest in the property, a person who satisfies the Director that they are a prospective purchaser or a mortgagee, and a lawyer demonstrably instructed by any of those. A prospective purchaser is named in the statute.

It does not prove that the property is a good buy, that what has been built is lawful, or that the seller can complete. And since Law 132(I)/2023 the seller has had to attach one to the contract dated within five working days of signature, so if you are buying, one exists whether or not you asked. What each route to getting one costs is on what a Cyprus land registry search costs.

Greece

The Greek national cadastre (ktimatologio)

The plot-based system Greece has spent decades building. Where the cadastral survey is complete, every property right is registered against a specific property carrying a unique cadastral number, and an interested party can obtain an excerpt of the cadastral database on request. The Greek contact point's contribution to the European Land Registry Network puts the average cost of a certificate or excerpt at €12.

It does not cover the whole country. The same source describes areas without a completed survey as "the vast majority", and in those the older system is what holds the record. So the first question about any Greek property is not what the cadastre says. It is whether the cadastre covers it.

It is also not a title deed. A cadastral record describes the plot and the rights registered against it. It is not the notarial act by which ownership moved, and the two are routinely confused in English writing about Greece.

The Greek cadastral code (KAEK)

The unique identifier a property carries in the cadastre, written in Greek as ΚΑΕΚ. In a cadastral area it is the key everything else hangs from: a right is registered against the code rather than against a person, which is what makes a plot-based search possible at all.

It proves nothing about ownership by itself. It is an identifier, in the same way that a registration number identifies a car without saying who is entitled to drive it. And a property in a transcription area has no code, because the code is created by the survey.

The older Greek mortgage registry (ypothikofylakeio)

The nineteenth-century system the cadastre is replacing, and still the one in force across most of Greece. It works by transcription and it is person-based: every registration of a property right is made under the name of the owner, and enquiries are based on that name.

The practical consequence is the one to carry away. There is no way to arrive at a transcription office with an address and ask what is registered against it. The Greek contact point states that the application must give a specific name and a specific title describing the property, and that under existing law the form can only be on paper and in Greek.

It does not deliver electronically either. Greek law does not allow electronic signature of these certificates, so they cannot be sent to the applicant electronically at all: collected at the office or posted at your cost. In offices covering cadastral areas, registration or rejection of an act must happen within five days of submission.

The Greek encumbrance certificate

The document the Greek state itself asks for when it wants to know whether anything is charged against a property. Its own investor-permit document list requires, in Greek, a πιστοποιητικό υποθηκοφυλακείου ή κτηματολογικού γραφείου, a certificate from the mortgage registry or the cadastral office, showing the absence of encumbrances.

The two institutions named in one line are the split described above, and which one issues yours depends on where the property is. The Greek Ministry of Migration and Asylum asks for it alongside a certificate from the notary who drew up the transfer deed, certifying the parties, the property, and how the agreed price was paid.

What it does not prove is that the position will still be the same tomorrow. It is a statement about a moment, and the moment it describes is the one it was issued in, which is exactly why the Cypriot statute next door now puts a five-working-day limit on the age of the equivalent document.

Why France, Italy and Portugal are not on this page

They were planned for it, and they are not here, and the reason is worth stating rather than hiding.

No primary source for the French cadastre, the Italian land registry record or the Portuguese land registry certificate was read for this build. Everything this site would have written about them would have been written from memory or from somebody else's summary, on a page a reader may act on before wiring six figures. The rule this site runs on is that a figure or a rule appears only with the instrument it came from and the date it was read, and applying that rule honestly means three entries do not exist yet rather than three entries that look like the others and are not.

They are a wave-2 job, and the first step is a fetch rather than a paragraph.

Start here

• You have a Cypriot contract in front of you. Read the search certificate entry above, then what to check before you pay a deposit.
• You have been sent a Greek document and cannot tell what it is. Read the cadastre and mortgage-registry entries above, then how a Greek purchase works.
• You are comparing what it costs to ask. The Cypriot figures are in the entries above and the routes are set out on what a Cyprus land registry search costs. The Greek residence-permit fees are on the golden visa page.
• You want to know who is writing this and how it is checked. Who writes this has the method, the correction policy and the full source register.