To the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Giorgos Stathakis
The Deputy Minister of Environment, Mr. Giorgos Dimaras
The President of the “GREEK ESTATE ARCHITECTURE” Professor, Mr. Byron Nakos.
Inside
Athens, 6.12.2018
SUBJECT: 1. Extension of the deadline for correcting initial entries in the National Land Registry &
- Immediate resolution of the ownership problem of the country’s off-plan real estate.
Dear Sirs
- In 111 regions of our country, the exercise deadline expires by the end of the current month of December suing the owners of the properties that appear in the Land Register as “UNKNOWN OWNER” because they either did not declare them for any -often innocent- reason, or they declared them with serious errors, so that these properties do not automatically go to the Greek State. These are the properties in 111 cities and regions of the country, in which 14 years have passed since the date of commencement of operation of the respective land registry offices, a deadline in which the possibility of legal action and therefore the property itself is definitively lost, since the initial registrations become final and produce irrefutable evidence in favor of those registered in the Land Registry. This will gradually follow throughout the country, with the result that all undeclared and “unknown owner” properties will automatically pass to the Greek State.
The non-extension of this deadline until at least the 20th anniversary of the use of the Civil Code, resulting in the automatic “confiscation” of the private real estate of those who for whatever reason did not participate in an administrative process of recording it, is clearly unconstitutional, in view of the fact that while the relevant legislation provides for compensation of the owners who will lose their property from this process, the state budget does not provide any relevant funds, which means that in practice there is no possibility of compensation either!
POMIDA requests that the deadline for correcting inaccurate records be extended until the completion of 20 years since the start of operation of each Land Registry Office, in order to be aligned with the Civil Code which provides for loss of ownership due to 20 years of “extraordinary use”.
- As is known, the services of the State declare in the Land Registry and claim a huge number of private properties throughout the country as public lands, mainly due to alleged forest character, so the citizen is forced to refute the claims of the State to look for and cite transcribed contracts going back at least to the year 1885, with as a result, private individuals and services are involved in long-term legal battles that lead to the impossibility of drawing up a Land Registry!
That is why POMIDA requests that you immediately resolve the years-long outstanding ownership problem of its off-plan properties of the country, establishing also in these properties a regulation that the State cannot claim property rights over off-plan properties that private individuals acquire in good faith, with similar conditions to those set by 3127/2003, for properties within the plan.
It is clear that the non-extension of the deadline for correcting initial records and the non-resolution of the ownership of off-plan properties violate the constitutional provisions on the protection of private real estate, and turn the Land Registry into a tool for the confiscation of the property of hundreds of thousands of honest citizens!
