Thousands of homes found with illegal certificates
Some 17,000 houses in the market have irregularities that even annul existing contracts
There are some 17,000 properties which are currently available for sale, but with serious irregularities, even though they carry certificates of engineers confirming the opposite. They undermine the smooth functioning of the housing market and compress further the already low supply of real estate.
These are properties currently being resold by the owners who acquired them from 2011 onward, that is when the requirement for an engineer’s certificate that the property for sale does not carry any irregularities came into force.
This revelation was made by Giorgos Rouskas, president of the Association of Notaries of Greece, in the context of the Premium Real Estate Forum last Saturday.
“We are facing a serious issue today as from 2011 until now we have identified 17,000 transfer contracts in which illegal engineers’ certificates were used,” said Rouskas. According to him, these properties currently for sale cannot be transferred as the irregularities in most of them are of a serious nature, rendering the original contract made in the past null and void.
“We are talking about serious abuses, such as change of use (e.g. declaration as a storage space, while it is a functional area of the residence) or height and area excesses. Therefore, the contracts made for their initial sale are invalid, as a result of which the re-transfers of these properties cannot be completed today,” Rouskas emphasized.
The problem practically concerns those who acquired these properties from 2011 onward and today are trying to resell them, discovering the irregularities with which they bought them. Whether this was knowingly or not remains to be seen. For example, an excess of plot height or surface is not always easy to detect.
On the contrary, whether a declared storage space or basement is actually part of the house is obviously described in the contract, i.e. known to the owner as well. In any case, these people are required to correct serious irregularities in order to be able to capitalize on their wealth.
