Red tape hobbles building IDs

The electronic building identity, which has been added to the dozens of documents and certificates that accompany property sales since last April, has resulted in serious delays, which in a number of cases has even led to sales being blocked.

This is a digital portfolio that brings together all the individual items and documents that come with a property, such as the building permit, static vulnerability report, title deeds, surface plans, meter board and any declarations of sanctions on illegal building being suspended.

Electronic IDs must be issued for all properties sold.

A few months after the implementation of this institution, the problems that are arising are very serious and have caused new delays in the completion of transactions, canceling the important progress made in the last two years in terms of reducing bureaucracy, not so much because of cutting the required documents, but through the possibility of issuing at least most of them digitally.

A key problem concerns the considerable time required by urban planners in order to respond to requests from engineers for the granting of the required permits and plans.

According to the deputy mayor of municipal property and construction at the Municipality of Athens, Grigoris Leon, in the case of the city center, where there is also a very high concentration of real estate, it takes two months on average for urban planning to respond.

The establishment of the e-ID was a constant request of the construction industry, but for owners to have the digital folder of their asset the town planning records would have to be digitized. The question therefore arises, why was the process of digitization of urban planning not preceded by the implementation of the electronic identity, and why was there no preparation by the competent agencies? According to Technical Chamber of Greece President Giorgos Stasinos, the funds required for the project of digitizing urban planning were not available.