A proposal drafted by the House legal affairs committee to finally solve the years-long problem of trapped property buyers will be forwarded to the plenum to be voted on before parliament closes for the summer holidays.

The proposal is expected to impact 4,000 of the more than 10,000 so-called trapped buyers.

Committee chairman, Disy MP Nikos Tornaritis said on Wednesday that the proposed legislation contained strict regulations “remedying to a great extent the problem concerning a huge group of victimised residents of the Republic of Cyprus, who bought property in good will, paid their instalments – some paying the loan off in its entirety – but so far have not received title deeds.”

Next Wednesday, the interior minister will be invited to the committee to see how he could help resolve the town planning problems, which resulted in some of the unissued title deeds.

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“There are ways that the executive power could use to offer solutions to the particular problem,” Tornaritis said.

“We are having these discussions because some people decided to send legislation, agreed on by all parties, to the courts,” he added.

 “We have been working systematically since last summer, in an effort to bring back an – at least – bearable legislative framework, which will secure the trapped buyers,” Akel MP Aristos Damianou said.

Currently, there are “more than 10,000” trapped buyers, of which 4,000 were expected to be “rapidly regulated” with the new legislation, Damianou said.

“We are at a very advanced stage,” he said, adding that the aim was to improve the proposed law over the coming weeks “to increase the number of people, who were never to blame, but on the contrary are paying the sins of the banks and insolvent developers”.

Damianou expects that the new legislation will be voted in before the holidays, thus allowing for a significant number of people being released, obtaining title deeds and having the property they bought registered in their name.

Regarding the earlier referral of the previous regulation by the Supreme Court, Damianou said “the banks and others shattered the effort, but I must say with satisfaction that in the ten years the legislation was in force, tens of thousands of trapped buyers were vindicated and in the end received title deeds for their own property.”

Diko MP Panikos Leonidou said the effort made was to reach a legislative framework that would not contravene the Constitution on the one hand and protect the buyers on the other.

Property owners not being issued their title deeds has been ongoing for years. Those impacted are owners whose properties have not yet been issued their final permits for various building violations, or those who paid for their property in full but the developer who built the property had a mortgage on the development and therefore the banks would not release title deeds to the registered owner.