.
The Internet and joining the EU common market have allowed for the holiday home business to flourish in Cyprus, becoming the main driving force for the developers to build more and sell more. The buyers are often European expats and some Cypriots who want to invest in a retirement home and rent it out to holidaymakers in order to pay down the mortgage or build up a nest egg.
Online bookings are now transacted by the minute, with hundreds of thousands of euros trading hands every month, especially during the holiday season from May to October.
As much as the consumer benefits from finding and comparing rates for “your ideal holiday home” in the Dot Com world, there is a great risk of the property not exactly being as advertised. As a result, many families from the U.K. and the colder northern European markets show up at a villa or apartment not realizing that there are noisy and dusty builders next door or that the house does not include all the amenities, while the “hire car available”, is a battered up old Suzuki jeep or Toyota Corolla in the garage.
Furthermore, money is exchanged in the form of an up-front deposit with the balance usually paid prior to moving in, which makes it excruciatingly difficult for disappointed holidaymakers to get part or a full refund.
This means that “remote operators” give Cyprus a bad name, because regardless if the owner is in Sussex, Surrey or Southampton, it is the “Cyprus property” that gets a blast in the local paper, much to the ire of the right honorable MP of that constituency.
The worst is that the CTO has no say in the regulation of individual holiday homes, although hotels and holiday apartments are obliged to sign up to a public contract in return for a star classification. Due to this uncontrolled situation, which some travel agencies had been pointlessly campaigning against for decades, the state too is losing out in millions of euros in unclaimed taxes as these transactions are untraced.
Very few villa owners have properly registered their homes and some have even established Cyprus companies, which at least leaves some revenue to Company House.
Perhaps one more thing for the new bosses at CTO to consider?
