New regulations that are expected to “unblock” transfers of properties that have been classified as forest, but also others that have been stuck due to urban planning violations will include a new bill for the Land Register of the Ministry of Digital Governance, which was presented yesterday to the cabinet by the minister and the deputy minister Mr. Dimitris Papastergiou and Kostas Kyranaki and is expected to be state law by September.
Land register
The main body of the new legislative initiative will concern cases of real estate appearing as forests or woodlands for which the State will not assert ownership rights.
Today, thousands of private properties have been declared in the Land Registry by the Forest Service even if the specific lands have been declassified, with the result that their owners are forced to resort to long and expensive legal battles in order to secure their properties.
Forest maps
With the new regulation, according to what an official of the Ministry of Digital Governance reports, any property owner who has secured – for a property that was classified as forest or forestry – the issuance of a decision in his favor by the Objection Examination Committee (EPEA) of Forest Maps or whose the property is not located within a certified forest map, he will be able to correct the registration at the land office, without the hassle of going to court.
However, today the number of objections to forest maps is now up to 400,000, with most still pending (as well as many applications for obvious errors in the forest services) as the Commissions work on …idling. It is typical that objections that have been submitted in various areas, six or seven years ago, have not yet been considered. So, the proposed regulation, for the time being, concerns only a few cases and does not solve the huge problem that has been created by the accumulation of thousands of cases in the EPEA.
Unblocking for urban planning violations
The same bill will also include a provision that will unblock sales and other transfers of real estate that had been “frozen” due to minor urban planning violations.
In particular, it is expected to establish the possibility of unilateral modification of the composition of horizontal ownership when a small difference is found between the measurement of square meters by modern means and the square meters mentioned in the old contract.
The new regulation will provide a solution to thousands of property owners who are stuck in dead ends due to trivial differences in square meters, as the ministry claims. However, it has not been clarified what “minor difference” means and what will be provided if the rights of other owners are affected (eg in a block of flats).
Today, the discrepancies between the real area of the property and the permits or contracts make it impossible to issue the necessary – for every transfer – electronic building identity. The regulation is a standing request of the Panhellenic Federation of Real Estate Owners (POMIDA) according to which the majority of old properties show differences between their actual surface area and that stated in the building permit or in the initial composition of the horizontal property.
AI in the Land Registry
At the same time, the new regulations will introduce the use of artificial intelligence in the Land Registry. The goal is for contracts to be read quickly, their details to be entered immediately, and the system to automatically generate a recommendation to the supervisor in an effort to reduce contract entry time.
As the political leadership of the ministry argued yesterday during the presentation of the bill to the cabinet, the supportive use of artificial intelligence tools in the legal control of contracts will reduce the processing time of complex cases by half. The bill will also introduce the framework for the safe use of artificial intelligence in the Land Registry.
Certified engineers for bug fixes
It will also include provisions for a new digital process of correcting the errors of old cadastral studies, activating and upgrading the role of certified engineers. Private engineers will have competence in requests for correction of geometric changes, performances will be done digitally, with a process that aspires to ensure efficiency and legal certainty.
With the promoted regulations, the paper-based process is abolished and an electronic platform is coming that will provide a solution in 1/3 of the time. Also, the proposed provisions will provide for the 24-hour submission of deeds to the land registry, with respect to time priority. The government’s goal is to complete the Cadastre in 2025, although the road is still very long, given that during the cadastral registration in many areas the percentage of citizens who keep properties in non-urban areas of various regions of the country is still extremely low .
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