The Council of Ministers has presented a legislative proposal to the legislative body suggesting an extension of the interval between comprehensive property assessments by the Department of Lands & Surveys, changing it from every three years to every five years.
Initially, comprehensive property assessments were determined based on the property's value as of January 1, 1980. This valuation from 1980 was utilized to compute an annual Immovable Property Tax owed to the Tax Department, as well as an annual tax due to the Community or Municipality where the property resided. Local councils are empowered to levy and adjust these community-level taxes.
It's important to note that even though the annual Immovable Property Tax paid to the Tax Department was discontinued starting January 1, 2017, it is still applicable for the computation of local property taxes for Communities and Municipalities.
The outdated nature of the 1980 valuations, which no longer reflected true property values, was widely acknowledged. As a result, in 2011, the Department of Lands and Surveys declared an initiative to reassess all properties on the island beginning in 2012. The new assessments would reflect the market values as of January 1, 2013, and would be employed for tax calculations.
By October 2014, the revaluation effort by the Department of Lands and Surveys faced over 4,600 objections, and around an additional 7,000 complaints were registered with Citizens Service Centres. Moreover, lawmakers reported numerous grievances brought to their attention.
Due to the overwhelming number of objections, the deadline for filing them was postponed by four months.
In 2018 and again in 2021, the Department of Lands & Surveys revised the values for over two million properties. The proposed legislative bill, however, intends to defer the forthcoming comprehensive assessments by the Department until 2026, with subsequent valuations scheduled every five years, conditional on parliamentary approval.
The Cyprus Real Estate Agents Registration Council issued a statement on Tuesday endorsing the proposal to modify the frequency of property valuations from three to five years. This adjustment, according to the council, would ease the operational burden on the Department of Lands and Surveys and allow it to concentrate on other essential duties.
Marinos Kineyirou, the council’s president, stated that the council had frequently brought up the matter, both in private sessions with government entities and through public discourse, maintaining that conducting extensive evaluations every three years is unnecessary due to the negligible market changes within such a short span. He emphasized that this practice incrementally burdens the Department of Lands and Surveys, a pivotal administrative branch.
It is vital to recognize that general property valuations are employed solely for taxation purposes and do not represent a property's market worth. Anyone requiring an accurate market valuation of their property should consult either a Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) licensed valuation surveyor or a member of the Cyprus Property Valuers Association.