Realty register to cut red tape

New online tool will impose a single square meterage for each property and facilitate sales.

The single property register, which will be activated early next year with the aim of reducing bureaucracy in transfers, will attempt to put an end to the discrepancies in the square meterage of properties, and each property will acquire a unique identity for all entities and services.

Essentially, this concerns the complete recording of all real estate owned by 7 million citizens. For example, in the event that a different square meterage is found for a property (in the Hellenic Cadastre 80 sq.m., in the electricity bills 68 sq.m. and in the E9 form 82 sq.m.), all entities will use the area recorded in the cadastre. This means that municipal fees will be calculated with the new square meterage, as will ENFIA etc.

This may lead to more dues for some property owners, and it is possible they will have to pay taxes retroactively or have amounts refunded retroactively. The final decisions will be made by the Ministry of National Economy and Finance after the completion of the project.

This automatic size correction is expected to significantly reduce the existing bureaucracy that accompanies the process of buying and selling a property. Nowadays, in all these documents, the square meterage of the property must be identical, which is almost impossible for the vast majority of horizontal properties. Otherwise, the electronic building identity that accompanies every transfer or parental concession cannot be issued. Therefore, the correction of the size will bring some order to the chaos and make it easier in future for owners who wish to sell or transfer their properties to their children.

The single property register will also include open data, as reported by the Ministry of Digital Governance. The government will be able to make targeted policies in each neighborhood: Knowing the energy efficiency in each neighborhood of the country, it will extract demographic data and specifically how many elderly people there are in a certain area, which could lead to the creation of a health center etc. It will follow the pattern set by the Netherlands.

Source: https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/real-estate/1262735/realty-register-to-cut-red-tape/