By Chrysostomos Tsoufis

The Panhellenic Federation of Real Estate Owners and the Coordinating Committee of Notarial Associations of Greece put the existence of a certificate of non-debt of joint users as a necessary condition for the transfer of a property in a joint letter to the leadership of the Ministry of Development.

Owners and Notaries ask that the sale of an apartment be prohibited without a responsible declaration from the manager of the apartment building to which the apartment belongs that no utilities are owed.

Alternatively, if there is no administrator or the administrator refuses to make the declaration, the obligation falls on the owner of the apartment.

The letter talks about a growing problem of non-payment of large sums of utilities from apartments, the majority of which belong either to servicers or to foreigners who have bought the properties through the golden visa program.

The last complaint according to information from that arrived at the offices of P.OM.ID.A last week concerned an apartment owner in the Northern Suburbs who “neglected” to pay utilities for 2.5 years!!!

Claiming these amounts is both time-consuming and so costly that many times it is not even worthwhile to claim them.
In some cases, of course, it is even impossible to claim them.

In the case of foreigners, they usually sell their property and leave our country since they have no other asset to keep them here.

In some cases, the administrators do not even know who the owners are since they do not even provide contact information.
In the case of the servicers, “find out who is in charge” market players typically told skai.gr.

The result in most cases is almost always the same. The expenses should be shared among the owners of the other apartments of the apartment building!!!

This is because the new owners of the apartments with joint user debts are not required by law to pay utilities for periods when they did not own the property.

According to the law, as stated in the letter, there is NO co-responsibility.

Therefore, a solution for property owners and notaries could be a relevant declaration, especially when the law stipulates that tax and insurance awareness certificates are required for the transfer of property, even if there is no TAP debt.

P.OM.IDA has also received “complaints” from the Ministry of Finance regarding the posting of the tax bill for public consultation. In particular, he raises objections to the measure of the three-year exemption from the rent tax for the properties that have been closed until now, which the owners will open and re-sell on the market for long-term lease.

The measure also includes properties that will go from short-term to long-term leases, provided that they have been in short-term leases for the last 3 years. The owners describe the term as harsh, which in itself is capable of overturning the dynamics of the measure.