Buying property in Cyprus and Greece

This site explains how buying property works in Cyprus and in Greece, in English, with every figure dated and traced to the authority that published it. The UK government's own Cyprus guidance was last updated on 27 November 2019. We are not lawyers and we sell nothing.

The short version

Two countries. Cyprus and Greece, and nothing else. Where a page says something about one of them, it names that country, the institution that decides the point and the instrument it comes from, in the same sentence.
gov.uk has a Cyprus buying-property page that was last updated on 27 November 2019, and no Greece buying-property page at all. Its Greek coverage is three sentences inside Living in Greece.
In Cyprus the contract of sale and the title deed are two separate instruments issued at different times, and the gap between them is where the money is lost.
In Greece two land-registration systems run side by side, one organised under the owner's name and one under a cadastral number for the plot, and which one covers your property decides what a search can be run on at all.
We sell nothing, check nothing and introduce you to nobody. That is not modesty. It is the only reason a page here can be an independent account of the people who do.

What you will find here

Three situations, three pages. Nothing else on this site is a starting point.

You have found a property in Cyprus. Start with how a Cypriot purchase actually works. The point it exists to make is that a Cypriot contract of sale and a Cypriot title deed are two different documents, issued at different times, and that a buyer can hold the first for years without ever getting the second.

You have found a property in Greece. Start with how a Greek purchase actually works. Greece is the harder of the two to write about honestly, because most of the money side of it could not be read from a Greek government source on 26 August 2026, and this site says so on the page rather than filling the gap with a number.

You have been asked to pay a deposit. Go straight to what to check before you pay a deposit. It is the one page here written for a person who has a date in the diary.

What the paperwork is called

The vocabulary is the first barrier and it is worse than it looks, because two of these documents share an English name and are not the same thing.

In Cyprus the deed is a Certificate of Registration of Immovable Property, issued by the Department of Lands and Surveys, and the search you run against the register before you buy is a Search Certificate of Immovable Property. They are different applications with different fees.

In Greece the plot-based cadastre is the ktimatologio and the older, name-based system it is replacing is the ypothikofylakeio. A cadastral record is not a title deed and a title deed is not a cadastral record. They are different instruments in both countries, and confusing them is how a British buyer ends up believing a plan of a plot proves who owns it.

Each of these, with who issues it and what it does not prove, is set out in the document glossary. It covers Cyprus and Greece, and it says on the page why France, Italy and Portugal are not on it: no primary source for any of them was read for this build, and an entry written from memory about a document you may act on is worse than a missing entry.

Before you pay anything

The moment that decides everything is earlier than most buyers expect, and it is in a different place in each country.

In Cyprus it is the deposit of the contract at the district lands office. In Greece it is the notary's deed. Both are set out, per country, with the instrument named, on what to check before you pay a deposit. If you read one page here before you transfer money, read that one.

Who we are, and what we are not

We are BSI OÜ, a private limited company incorporated in Estonia. We are small and we are foreign to both countries this site writes about, and saying so is worth more than any badge would be. Our Estonian registration number is on the legal notice, the register that holds it is public and free to search, and one click of it tells you more about who is behind this site than a crest ever could.

We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. Before you commit money, instruct an independent lawyer who acts only for you in the country where the property is. That is also what gov.uk says, which makes it credible rather than defensive.

We sell nothing. There is no report, no checkout and no service to buy. We check no property, we obtain no document for you and we put you in touch with nobody. We have no connection with gov.uk, with the Department of Lands and Surveys in Cyprus, or with the Hellenic Cadastre or a Greek land registry office. There is no seal on this site, no crest, no flag and no assembly of flags, because there is nothing to borrow authority from.

What we do is narrow. We read the fee schedules and the statutes, we print the date we read them beside every figure, and we re-read all of them every 90 days. Who writes this and how it is checked sets out the method and the correction policy.

What this site does not cover

It covers Cyprus and Greece. It does not cover Spain, Portugal, Italy or France, and there is no page here that pretends otherwise: a country is added when its hub is written, never before, and a stub for a country nobody has researched is worth less than the missing page it replaces.

It does not cover mortgages, currency transfer, tax filing or immigration advice. It does not look up who owns a property, and it never will. Every page here can tell you what a document is, who issues it and what it costs to ask for. None of them reproduces or mirrors a single record, and that is deliberate.