Another 139 land registry offices are shut down

The Hellenic Land Registry has decided to close 139 offices across the country, with their services transferred to the nearest branch or office of the registry. Less than 26 mortgage offices remain to be closed. The challenge is to ensure their smooth integration, as some 150,000 pending cases have also been “transferred.”       

They do not leave behind digitized files as foreseen by a 1993 law, but hundreds of books that cannot simply be moved.

“This issue should have been over two years ago. It is a difficult transition because mortgage offices are not leaving behind digitized records as a 1993 law provided, but hundreds of books that simply cannot be moved. That is why the abolished mortgage offices remain as satellites to serve lawyers for a while until the digitization of the records is completed. But the liquidation of the mortgage offices also requires a long process,” said Apostolos Tsoutsas, president of the Panhellenic Association of Land Registry Workers.