Land Registry Law
Did you know that only the 59% of the country’s cadastral survey has been completed? In Greece, land registry and cadastral functions are transitioning from the old Cadastre to a modern digital National Land Registry. This transition involves a shift from a person-based system to a property-based system, where all real estate transactions and data are managed through the digital National Cadastre.
The main laws governing real estate in Greece are the Hellenic Civil Code and Laws 2308/1995 and 2664/1998, which cover land registration and cadastral procedures. Unfortunately, the initial entries of this digital National Cadastre address lots of inaccuracies that need to be corrected. One such inaccurate entry is the 'unknown owner' entry. This is the case where the beneficiary has failed for whatever reason at the cadastral registration stage to submit a declaration of ownership. The correction of this registration is nowadays largely carried out extrajudicially by means of a request for a manifest error, i.e. without the need for recourse to the Land Registry Judge. The application is submitted digitally to the competent cadastral office and the competent Head of the office proceeds to correct the relevant cadastral sheet, listing the applicant as the owner. However, there are also cases of registration of an unknown owner for which recourse to the Courts is deemed necessary.
However, an application for the correction of errors is also required for the correction of other elements of the cadastral sheet that were not correctly recorded at the cadastral registration stage. Indicatively, errors relating to the beneficiary or his right, the failure to indicate areas of exclusive use, the incorrect indication of the address, the incorrect indication of the title of ownership, etc. are inaccuracies that can be resolved by the simplified procedure.
Apart from the case of such errors, a common case of cadastral inaccuracy is the case where the land register sheet shows the current owner's grantor as the principal, i.e. it does not reflect the fact that the right was transferred to the actual beneficiary by a notarial deed that was transferred to the formerly competent Land Registry, but the acquirer failed to submit a declaration of ownership at the cadastral registration stage for the new right acquired. The cadastral legislation provides another extrajudicial "tool", namely the application for registration for the entry in the cadastre of deeds that have been transcribed in the transfer books of the Land Registry, in accordance with the procedure of Article 6 par. 4 of Law 2664/1998.
The above are just a few examples of inaccurate entries that can be found in the database of the Hellenic Cadastre. With knowledge and consistency, we undertake the control of the correctness of the declared rights, the submission of requests for the correction of obvious errors, lawsuits or requests for declarations of ownership, changes concerning spatial changes, etc.