Athens in the digital era of land registry
In the Municipality of Athens, 1,250,171 ownership rights concerning 729,223 properties on 65,306 plots of land have been registered. [SHUTTERSTOCK]
End of his long “transition” period land register her of Athens it will enter the digital age in the coming months. From October, the office will be strengthened in order to digitally register the approximately 3,500 pending transactions, while November formally completes the land registration phase. This is followed in January by the opening of the office as a transitional one and at the beginning of March as definitive, i.e. with all available digital services. By the end of the year, the digital file of the Athens mortgage office will start, which apart from the Municipality of Athens covers both Moschato and Galatsi.
Land registration in the Municipality of Athens went through many waves. The declaration of the owners by citizens was made in 2008-2009. During this phase, 833,000 ownership declarations were submitted, covering 1,251,000 active ownership rights.
The sequel was not so “easy”. The then Ministry of Foreign Affairs had decided in the entire second phase of cadastral registration that the project should be divided into two tenders, one for the collection of the data and one for the creation of the digital database. In the case of Athens, the result of the second competition was challenged in court and finally the contract was signed… in 2016. The process of pre-posting (March 2019, through which 40,000 errors were corrected) and the posting of cadastral data and diagrams (June 20) followed, through the of which 16,700 correction requests were submitted. For the applications of the land registry office, he prepared reports which he made public as provided for in the legislation of March – April 2022, so that the participants were informed and could intervene. About 500 of those will be referred to the commissions for examining land registration cases.
After the corrections (and the passage of more than a decade since the collection of declarations was made), the cadastral basis of Athens is now starting to take a definitive form: the “active” ownership rights are 1,250,171 and another 729,223 properties on 65,306 parcels of land (plots). 1,199 properties or rights have been recorded as having an unknown owner (only a percentage of a property’s ownership could be listed as ‘unknown’).
In mid-October, the tender for finding a new building for the cadastral office of the capital will be re-announced.
“Now the land registry in the Municipality of Athens seems to be entering its final form. In October, the office will be strengthened with 10 private lawyers – thanks to the program agreement with the Athens Bar Association – who will support the legal audit and the filing of deeds (another 40 lawyers will be allocated to other offices in Attica), as well as 8 people from the Greek Land Registry. The goal is to close all outstanding issues, including the registration of 3,500 contracts”, Stefanos Kotsolis, managing director of the Hellenic Land Registry, explains to “K”.
“Then, on November 30, the digital database of the land registry will be “frozen” in order to be delivered by the private contractor to the Hellenic Land Registry. During this time, transactions will continue as normal, just that the mortgage office will not digitally register in the land registry. I should note that this process does not affect citizens, who will continue to be served as they are today. Then, on January 10, it is expected that the land registry office will turn into a transitional land office, starting to offer some digital services such as electronic document search. Finally, on March 1st, the full integration of the cadastral office of Athens into the Hellenic Land Registry will follow, at which point it will be able to provide all digital services to citizens and professionals”.
It should be noted that in mid-October, the tender for finding a new building for the land office of Athens will be re-announced, as the previous one was declared barren. “If no space is found, the service will continue to be housed in the building of the mortgage office,” says Mr. Kotsolis. “However, we would prefer a space that does not meet modern needs. However, at the moment, given the demand that exists in the center of Athens for other uses, it might be difficult.”
By the end of the year, the digitization of the books of the mortgage registries will also begin. “The contract for the digitization of the records of the mortgage offices has been signed, it is now in the software development phase and soon the executive agreement will be signed, to start the digitization of the records of the mortgage offices of Athens, Piraeus, Kallithea, Argosaronic Islands and Glyfada-Voulas. Finally, the matter of the final office has been resolved: today it has a staff of 40 people, the 10 teaching staff and the 8 executives of the Hellenic Land Registry will remain and deputy heads will be appointed until the position is announced. We are now able to speak with certain days about Athens, which makes us very happy since it is the office of the largest municipality in the country.”
⇒ News today
Follow it kathimerini.gr on Google News and be the first to know all the news
See all the latest News from Greece and the World, at kathimerini.gr