Cyprus’ real estate agents association’s chairman, report that an appreciable amount of mainly Chinese clients (Chinese, Russian, and Middle Eastern individuals are the main categories of foreign clients who buy property in Cyprus) fell victim to agents who claim to be real estate agents, but in reality they were never registered as such. Those agents were selling property at extremely high prices. Their actions only make it worse for the Cyprus property market which has suffered in the last years because of Cyprus law.

On Friday Marinos Kynegirous said in an interview: -’’They are real but illegal real estate agents who focus on foreign buyers. Artificially raising the prices to take advantage according to grown interest for property in Cyprus’’.

During the last years the Cyprus real estate market dealt with lot of problems. According to law people who buy property in Cyprus can’t get a title deed if the developers who sold it to them were bankrupt. Because of that Cypriot parliament passed a law to help fix this issue.

But regardless to recent problems with property business in Cyprus, the amount of properties bought by foreigners from third-world countries increased. It caused by incentives offered to buyers, such as tax breaks. Foreign buyers from third-world countries are able to apply for a Cypriot citizenship in case of investing more than €2.5m. All of that leads to demand increase for real estate in Cyprus.

Kynegirou believes that 2016 will be a better year for property business in Cyprus following the early signs of stabilisation. ’’This year we will do better than in 2015’’ he said. He also admits that even a small amount of foreigners from Russia and China can cause property sales to increase in Cyprus because of the huge population of these two countries.

Meanwhile, the head of the real estate agent’s association stated that even though construction activity has grown in the second part of 2015, there still was noticeable amount of property stock available to sell.

Bank figures have recently shown that loans used for construction and real estate were at €5.1bn and €2.4bn in September, this allotted for a 78 % and 55% of the various categories.

In conclusion, it is clear that situation surrounding real estate in Cyprus is complicated but is getting better.