Spokesperson: Marian Stokes
Minutes: Sheila Vango
Marian opened the meeting by thanking everyone for attending the meeting today, especially as it was so close to Xmas. She thanked the Pia Bella for once again opening its doors to us to hold the meeting and their wonderful staff for looking after us so well.
She went on to explain that she was not going to be doing much of the talking today as a number of people who had benefited from the advice given by the HBPG and by their own considerable efforts would be taking the floor to tell their stories.
However, before they start, just on a personal note - because of an article that appeared in the Cyprus Today everyone seems to think that Richard and I are ‘Down and Out in Northern Cyprus’, - we are not, we are fine , thank you very much all of those of you that offered us accommodation etc. We are going nowhere!
The main message I want to get over today is that we must all stick together; I have prepared a few short questions that I would like you to respond to, although as the turn out today is much smaller than we anticipated, I do not know how representative the answers will be. (Attendees were 100 at best)
How many people came today, who are without problems, to offer their support to their fellow homebuyers? (4)
How many people here today secured their title deeds without having to pay any more that the contracted price? (10)
How many people here today secured their title deed and paid extra money? (1)
How many people are still waiting for their Permission to Purchase? (32)
How many people have received their Permission to Purchase but have not yet got their title deeds? (38)
How many of you have an encumbrance on your title – injunctions, mortgages and memorandums? (7)
How many of you know that your landowner has taken out a loan using your paid for property as collateral? (6)
How many of you here today have purchased from Santa Fe (they are one of the biggest builders, some 600 properties)? (3)
How many of you have bought from Boyut (900 properties)? (1)
Thank you.
The meeting was called today with these people in mind really, as we see the next big disaster looming as being home repossessions when the mortgages taken out by the likes of Boyut, Santa Fe and others remain unpaid. We hoped to encourage those of you affected to learn from today’s speakers and get yourselves organised and ready to face this challenge.
We do have some good news, people are getting their title, for instance Savyon Village in Catalkoy are being processed at the moment following parcelisation and I believe Medview have also started to issues title deeds and of course, Kibris Insaat always do it properly. So there are some good people round here.
So as I said earlier, I am sure there are some of you that would like to take your fate back into your own control, but maybe do not know where to start and who to approach or ask for help. Our speakers today are going to emphasis just how much can be achieved with a lot of patience and persistence. It is all about collecting the correct information and constructing your own jigsaw puzzle and this is not easy, you will get many a wrongly shaped piece and if you are working as a team, the opposition will try their best to divide and conquer you all and stop your efforts. But the satisfaction you get from doing it yourself is immense, some of the experiences you are about to hear have no ending as yet and maybe some of you would rather not know the full extent of how you have been deceived, but each of our speakers is empowered with the knowledge they have, they are no longer victims.
The first people I am going to ask to speak are Diane and Steve, they have had no problems apart from waiting for their PTP and final title transfer, let them tell you their story about how to find out what property transfer taxes are due and how to pay them.
Steve
First of all I would just like to say that three years ago we attended the early meetings of the HBPG, and upon hearing the problems that people had, we pulled out of the purchase of an off plan property and then armed with good advice, went and bought a resale. We engaged a lawyer, who handled the sale but who retained £4000 to cover our taxes when they fell due.
About a month ago we received a bill from her to finalise the taxes to be paid to enable us to get our title transfer, the bill was for £5400.00, this was on top of the £4000.00 she was holding for us. She did not make it clear in the bill presented if the person we bought from was a professional or non professional seller. (this distinction is important as a non professional seller means you incur a 3% tax charge and no KDV is due – as opposed to 6.25% professional fee, plus 5% KDV.)
We asked Marian to accompany us to the tax office and ascertain the tax identity of our seller. They confirmed to us our seller was indeed a non professional seller. This meant our tax bill was about £3600.00 in total. When we e mailed our lawyer to inform her of our findings, she responded by stating we had obviously lost trust in her and she no longer wanted to represent us! Indeed, could we call into her office at our earliest convenience and collect our file.
When we called at the office we were informed that the £1000.00 we paid her to handle the sale only covered the PTP process, not to see the contract through to title transfer.
This was in contradiction to her first email setting out the taxes due and asking us to deposit the money to her bank account so that title transfer could be carried out quickly!
Upon asking for the return of our £4000.00, held in her bank account for 3 years and no doubt earning interest, we were informed that deductions were to be made, these were £300 to cover tax and minor charges. We asked for a breakdown and discovered that the tax element was £19 only, the rest were the minor charges, including £150 for a telephone call to my insurance company.
Now without a lawyer, we decided to go to Land Registry ourselves to gain our title, they were very polite, very helpful and told us everything we needed to do. So thank you to Marian.
MS: So what do you learn from this – check everything yourself, would the lawyer have picked this gross error up – who knows – she had produced a bill based on what? Obviously no checking before the event! Do it yourself, if the information you have supplied by your lawyer or builder is 100% correct, there is no harm done. Steve and Diane could have been fleeced of £5000+. A good days work, a few hours, best paid hours of their lives for a long time. Thank you for being brave enough to speak out.
Our next speaker, Linda Robinson, is going to tell you about DIY title transfer as she got fed up waiting for someone to get around to it and decided to move things on herself; here is her story in her own words
Having bought our land in Sept 2002, we have had our Kocan for only 6 weeks.
After leaving it in the hands of our solicitor for 5 years, and with us going into or ringing the office periodically, in all that time, no one contacted us, we were told it was with the Police or Army, no one seemed to know what was going on. At the last meeting in the solicitors’ office at the beginning of this year, we were told that it was the Army report we were waiting for, no one knew when or how long it had been in for, or how long it would be. We now decided it was time to do something ourselves, if we could, so it was off to find Marian to point us in the right direction.
She took us to the complaints dept in Lefkosia and also to the Ministry of Interior, which is in the same building as Immigration; at least we knew where that was.
At the Ministry of Interior we asked to see our file and gave them our file number, “its lunch time” said the clerk, “what time is lunch” we asked, “12 o clock” he said, “but its only 11.30am” we replied, and asked him please could he get our file.
A few minutes later he came back with it, and pinned to the front of the file was our Army report. It was obvious that unless you go personally and ask to see the file, you will only get the answer that is on their computer, and if it hasn’t been updated then you will get the wrong answer. What we needed was the Land Registry report and it hadn’t even been applied for. Why!!!! No one knew. Back to the complaints dept and Tucge the secretary and Nejibe (the legal advisor) said they would go to the Ministry of Interior and apply on our behalf, which they did the next day.
After that we called into the Ministry of Interior office a couple of times and also rang them. About 6 weeks later when I rang I was told that the report was through and they gave me a date and an approval number which I was to take to the Land Registry in Girne.
There we were given papers and were told to take them to our Vendor and get him to sign them. We took them to our solicitor as they are all in Turkish, and he told us that he would get our Vendor to sign them and when the time came would help us to sort out our taxes.
We were ringing and going to their office all the time only to be told that they were still waiting for the papers to come back, in the middle of June after yet another visit, we were told they would contact us by e mail. I received the e mail on the 1st August to go and collect our papers, pay our taxes and get our vendor to pay his, so where was the help promise? I thought that the solicitor would do all the contacting and we would just go to the tax office and pay, No we had to do it all ourselves.
The papers were out of date, the stamp on them only lasts for a month, they had been signed on 23rd May, why weren’t we contacted before, “we have” they said, “by e mail, several times”, funny I didn’t receive any before 1st August, and now they had to be sent away again to be re stamped. More delays.
Back to the solicitors a few days later, to collect them and we took them to the Land Registry and ask what to do next. They gave us a piece of paper with the amount of the transfer tax to pay at a local bank, but before that we had to go to the tax office and pay our taxes first, and the vendor had to pay his.
A few trips to the tax office next, to find out how much we would have to pay. Once I had found the right office I needed someone to speak English, not many of the staff do, but another customer was kind enough to translate for me. On other occasions a member of staff helped although they didn’t work in that department.
You need to know if the vendor is a professional or not, you should then be able to work out how much tax you will have to pay. The tax office will work it out for you, but its nice to know beforehand, we would have paid out a lot more if I hadn’t checked because when they looked on their computer I was told our vendor was a professional. I rang our vendor and he said no that isn’t right, he went to the tax office and got it sorted, the problem was the land, after it had been parcelised it was all in his name, and it looked like he had sold the lot.
After a few days it was all sorted and we paid our taxes. Then it was off to the bank. With all the receipts in hand we went back to the Land Registry.
The necessary forms were signed by us and the vendor had to sign the transfer document, and it was all over, we felt elated, just 1 more month to wait and we should have our Kocan, so off to the UK with peace of mind, to enjoy our Granddaughters wedding, and 6 weeks later we collected our kojan from the Land Registry Office.
Now all we need is the final approval, so it’s off to the Kymakamlik office after Bayram to see Peril.
MS: Thank you Linda, Peril by the way is the name of a very helpful lady in Kymakamlik, not a reference to taking your chances there! This is just one example of what you can achieve, no it is not easy, yes it is frustrating, but so worthwhile. You can not rely on what you are told by your lawyer, please, please find out for yourself.
Moving on, getting your title is great, it seems like the last barrier, but now we come to the real problem, for many of you the chances of getting that far are nowhere in sight. This occurs for many reasons, one of which is that your landowner is not the person you have signed your contract with (the Vendor) or if the landowner and builder are partners they have fallen out and their relationship breakdown will have dire consequences for you. When this relationship breaks down they take litigation cases against each other and your interest in the dispute (your investment) is not even taken into consideration as legally you do not own anything. So I am going to call on Jane and Derek to explain their situation to you in there own words and what they have learnt so far and where they go from here.
Jane and Derek
I’d like to tell you a bit about us. Our names are Jane and Derek and any of you who know us, will know that we are a bit of a double act so please bear with us. We ran a successful small business in the UK for 30 years. Alongside this I also worked for the NHS. For various reasons, we decided that we needed to make a change in our lives and so we put a plan into effect which would eventually lead to us moving to the TRNC on a permanent basis.
The night before we flew out to start our new lives we had a farewell meal with our children and grandchildren. For some reason, we decided to do a last minute check of our e mails. We had received one from our advocate telling us that the 2 partners in our building company had fallen out and that neither one was willing to pay their taxes in order to transfer title to us. We had received our permission to purchase some months before. This seemed like a tremendous blow. Little did we know that this was just the start of our troubles.
Upon arriving in the TRNC we went to see our advocate, who told us that we now had a bigger problem in that one of the partners had placed an injunction on our property as he had instigated a law suit against the other. On her advice, we took out our own injunction against the Building Company. This was in November 2007.
In March 2008, we paid our stamp duty and registered our contract with the District Land Office. We were under the impression that this would afford us some degree of protection.
In November 2008, we learnt that one of the partners has been awarded a substantial sum of money against the other. This partner has now placed a memorandum on our property without our knowledge. Nobody has been able to answer how this is possible after registration of our contract. We have heard that he intends to seek Compulsory Sales Orders in order to satisfy his claim against the other. This places our home at risk as it is likely to be offered at auction.
Our own litigation against the Building Company is continuing and we hope to receive a judgment soon which will allow us to place our own memorandum on our property. After this, we are in unchartered waters as no one seems to know which memorandum will take priority and this scenario has not been tested in court.
It is also alleged that one of the partners has fraudulently transferred some title deeds and assets into other names in order to avoid his creditors. We will be looking at ways to bring his to the attention of the courts in order to cancel these fraudulent transfers.
The following quote may interest you: “I hope that ways will be found to ease the plight in which the people find themselves through no fault of their own”
The people in this room might assume that this quote could apply to all of us. In fact it was said by UN Sec. General, Kofi Annan about the Turkish Cypriot people, 2 days after the Annan Plan failed.
Whilst we can in no way compare the two situations, it does give us an insight into how impotent one can feel.
I feel that we have been riding an emotional roller coaster for the past year with no end in sight. This involves numerous visits to advocates, courts and government offices.
We are unable to continue work on our house.
We are unable to do the travelling we have always dreamed of doing.
We are frustrated at the lack of progress.
We are frustrated at how difficult information is to obtain.
We are essentially more trapped than we ever were in the UK.
All of our problems are due to the laws surrounding ownership. This allows unscrupulous people to steal our properties because even though we have paid for our houses, in law we do not own them.
I would ask that we all help each other whenever we can.
I would ask that we all share information.
I would ask that we all support each other in time of need.
As human beings, our natural inclination is to ignore problems and hope that they will go away. They usually don’t.
There is not always a happy ending. Bad things do happen.
Please promise your public support as the need arises. We need to ensure that we mobilise hundreds if not thousands of people for public action.
Finally, I offer the following quote, attributed to Edmund Burke, 18th Century Irish political philosopher and Statesman: “The only thing needed for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing”
MS: Thank you Jane and Derek, unfortunately they are not alone, there are another 9 people impacted by this legal action on their site. All these people are in danger of never owning legally the properties they have bought and worse case scenario – their homes may be auctioned to settle the litigation decision.
Gaining title seems to be a Cypriot wide problem as we hear of ‘horror’ tales from the South as well. But regardless of where people decide to settle and invest their money in their adopted country it is of no comfort to hear it happens elsewhere, as if that makes it ok for it to happen here too. We have all paid our money in good faith and simply ask for what we have paid for!
I am now going to ask Anne to speak, she is a little bit further along the road than Derek and Jane, but I do not know if that is going to be of comfort to them. The difference is that Derek and Jane have taken possession of their house, whereas that does not apply for Anne who is still renting, years after she expected to be in her own home. (we all try to find silver linings in our own particular black cloud).
Anne
Before I start I would like to offer my thanks to Marian and her volunteers at the HBPG surgeries, without them I would have given up and gone home or crazy a long time ago. May I also say I am the least probable campaigner and it was certainly not on my horizon to spend my time fighting for justice by bringing pressure to bear on the authorities here, but here I am.
Anne's story is long and complicated, you can find the link to it at the bottom of these Minutes.
MS From hearing Anne’s reality, it makes you realise how easy it is to be grateful for small problems, however, what we want is no problems, what we want is for buyers to happily sign contracts and wait for their keys and title deeds. This is not the UK, it is a very accessible island and if you phone the Chief Justice and politely ask for an appointment, you will get one. Do not be afraid to knock on whomever’s door you need to get the answers you need to make progress – but you do need to have all the information to hand in order for the person who's help you are seeking is in a position to be able to do so!
So on that note I am going to hand the floor over to Sheila and Malcolm, they are Aga buyers, who find themselves overshadowed by their much larger sister site, Amaranta Valley. They head up a largish group as group co-ordinators and have done sterling work trying to get details about their whole site.
These are their notes
HZ Omar Site: 65 properties, 14 part built villas, 1 completed but without infrastructure and utilities,others no roads or pavements
Group with active volunteers formed about 18 months ago at the Pia Bella following a meeting with Marian. Not much choice for active volunteers as only 7 buyers live here fulltime, others are in UK, Australia ands Spain. Started with 3 active volunteers, but the stress of the whole situation on the site has resulted with one member resigning
Why did we need a Formal Group?
Buyers needed support – concrete help not just a shoulder to cry on (4 deaths, others have had heart attacks, strokes and depression)
We needed people to be aware of our difficulties – raise our profile and bring our cause to the attention of those who may be able to help. We tend to be the poor relation; the other larger site gets all the attention/publicity
Properties needed to be completed
Infrastructure needed to be completed – a number of completed properties had no electric supplied
Classification needed in respect of land ownership – 5 landowners on our site, some of which cover the same property (ie two landowners under one house)
No one had Permission to Purchase – crucial – although some owners did not accept this as so
We all needed to be sure that our properties were legal and our homes were safe
Obstacles the Formal Group Faced
Lack of information
Initially the builder seemed receptive to our concerns but as we began to be better informed, he broke of all communications with us
Attempts were made by the builder to split the group
Everyone has their own/different agenda
Confidentiality was breeched (someone within the group was informing others of our progress)
No one ever thinks you are doing enough for them!
Disputes between builder and directors, and builder and government
HZ Omar Formal Group Tasks
Gathering Information
From the buyers – Names, addresses, contact numbers, lawyers, copies of contracts, receipts for monies paid, PTP numbers, dates applied for etc.
Identification of double sales/refunds – still ongoing
Site
Identifying landowners (5)
Which landowners land properties were on
Identifying issues with PTP
Outstanding debt
Making Contact With
– Property information Office – you must lodge a complaint
– Government – from Prime Minister downwards – anyone who will listen
– Lawyers – you need a lines of communication open with all those concerned
– Landowners – language can be a problem, but is also fun!
Learning about the Law and your Rights – a mammoth task.
Taxing contracts
Arranging registrations and collecting payments
Organising electricity supplies to completed properties
Survey of site and collecting payments
Constant enquiries regarding PTP
Court appearances
Be prepared to
– Produce lists by the dozen
– You may end up in meetings all day long or have to attend at night
– Your computer overheats
– Your phone bills double overnight
Lastly, do not be surprised by the speed at which things happen – it is always Yarin!
MS – Thank you Sheila and Malcolm. The important thing to note here is that this is not just another Gary Robb site – the same problems in varying degrees is going to be faced by any group of buyers with a common problem. It may well fall to those of you here to co-ordinate your efforts, there will be difficulties as everyone’s personal situation is different – but the problem is the same. You must form together and organise and Sheila and Malcolm have been there, done it and got the T shirt.
Most of you with problems are going to find yourselves in a DIY situation – I cannot cure all your problems, nor can my team, or any of the speakers here today, but we can assist you in everyway conceivable. Between us we have a wealth of knowledge; you just have to tap into it. It is not easy, it is frustrating, it is time consuming, it is unpaid – but it is also satisfying, elating when you succeed and more importantly – it is taking control of your fate!
The other important thing to say is that Malcolm and Sheila have their own private intranet site where the members of their site can communicate freely and openly between themselves, so if anyone gets a glimmer of information it can be spread through the group. How comforting it must be, not to feel alone and even to have contact and maybe be able to visit other neighbours within the UK – after all who understands the roller coaster of emotions we all go through if not each other?
I want to talk briefly about mortgages – thousands of pounds have been taken in mortgages by builders, landowners and developers, those of you who registered your contracts have become aware if you are at risk. I cannot stress it often or loudly enough – if you are one of those affected – if your mortgagee does not keep up his payments – YOU COULD POTENTIALLY LOOSE YOUR HOME. We are in the midst of a worldwide credit crunch, thousands of major institutions are going to the wall – do you truly believe this is not going to happen here?
How many of you even know who your land owner is – the man who can borrow the money – have you all got copies of the Koçan with the current (no that is not you) owner stated on it – if not go see your solicitor and demand a copy!
Take your heads out of the sand, organise yourselves now, find out how much the mortgage is for, find out which bank loaned the money? Find out if the mortgage is in arrears, go and ask the bank manager why he loaned against an asset which had been sold to a third party, withdraw any savings from banks who act in this manner. Make a complaint to the Property Information Office.
Do you think there is nothing you can do about it if it happens – is that the source of your apathy? Well maybe you are right, but we can at least expose this scam for what it is and plug the loopholes, we can make the banks think twice when we withdraw our savings. Stop being a victim.
The next stage (or hopefully end game) is going to court. I know many of you have heard Sheila account of being in court, but she is going to speak briefly today about the importance of information gathering, so I will pass over to her
Sheila
When we moved here 5 years ago we had no idea we would end up in court, it was not an item on our list of things to do before we die! However, that said, I think we are not alone in being excited about moving here and over the time prior to arriving here we made a scrap book of photos, e mails and notes agreed with the builder/lawyer. This is your starting point!
Add to it as you go along, the developments in the garden, the receipts for non removable additions to your property, maybe a small spreadsheet of your initial spending for the first year or so. If you never encounter a problem, it is nice to look back on; in our case it formed the basis for our court case. As time went on we added official reports, information from the web, a diary of court appearances, we got all his defence paperwork translated and systematically went through it arguing which points we could and backing it up with hard evidence from our evidence file.
We backed everything up – I would scan documents and e mail them to myself at Yahoo, I would copy everything to disc and send it home with my parents, we would photocopy everything – paranoid – maybe but it is all I have. Without it how could I form a case?
It took us three and a half years to get heard at trial, it finished in May and we are still awaiting an outcome. By the time the case finished, both judges would walk into court carrying the evidence we had submitted, our builder submitted one piece of paper. I was able to prove time and again that what he claimed was not true because I had the evidence to refute it or question it.
You and your solicitor have to have a good rapport, you must ensure that what is being done in your name is what you want done and that it is a strong as it can be. You want a solicitor who is angry on your behalf. If your solicitor suggest court as on option – are they really the best one to go for litigation – ask them how many cases they have won, have they taken others like this, what was the outcome? Do they suggest court as a throw away comment or do they convince you that this is the right thing to do because xyz? Court can be a cash cow!
Again, if you are going to court, I am more than happy to go with you, once again the solicitors will feed you on bull**** and keep you in the dark if they can. If you just want to talk about what you can do to be prepared for court, I can help, we always attend the Tuesday Surgery here at the Pia Bella, so come along.
MS: I think it goes without saying that none of these people found their journeys easy, journeys they would rather have not taken and most probably want to get off the bus now – but they look back and can see how far they have come.
One last note, on the tables are some forms which ask if you are willing to take a phone call and attend a site, or court or anything if we need you, I would ask you to fill them in. We do not know when the first bailiffs will turn up at someone’s home with an eviction order so that the mortgaged land can be sold at auction for example. If that happens we want to be able to call someone to come and witness the event and offer support to the unfortunate people concerned. Sometimes buyers will need your moral support in a Court Hearing. It is time to come together as a community and support each other. Please watch Diary Dates on our website for information.
Please look on the website, there are people there trying to contact other people on their sites, usually because the site is in trouble. I will not hand out your information but I can put you in touch with other people on your site. I have built up a great deal of information – why reinvent the wheel, if you are going to get organised, come see me, maybe I can help with information already known to me.
The meeting closed following a brief Q&A session.
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