Greatstone homeowners win an auction ‘reprieve’
AN AUCTION of mainly expat-owned properties in Lapta was called off at the “11th hour” after buyers launched fresh legal action. Homeowners at the Greatstone development now face an “anxious wait” over Christmas and the New Year to find out if their bid to challenge the “diminishing” price tag for the site — set in Turkish lira — will succeed.
They are claiming that the starting price of the land and the homes on it, which has been reduced from 4.7 million TL to “around 3 million TL” following a number of unsuccessful auctions this year, is “too low”.
Thirteen Greatstone properties on the site were sold to foreign buyers from 2006, many of them British, but none received title deeds despite each handing over an estimated £150,000.
The Turkish lira has since lost around half of its value against sterling.
Greatstone fell into conflict with landowner Bülent Yüksekbaş before it could obtain separate title deeds and transfer them to the purchasers.
Mr Yüksekbaş had taken out a £300,000 mortgage on the property as security and later sued Greatstone for that amount and for other claims.
Girne District Court ruled in June last year that Mr Yüksekbaş was entitled to receive a total of £867,000 to include the unpaid mortgage and monies owed, allowing him to sell all the Greatstone properties to repay the debt.
A spokesman for the Girne Land Registry confirmed that Sunday’s auction had not gone ahead.
“An application was made to Girne District Court over claims the asking price of the property is too low,” he told Cyprus Today.
“The auction has therefore been stopped until this case is heard and dealt with by the courts. We have nothing more to say.”
One of the buyers’ lawyers, Güneş Menteş, told this paper that the application to Girne District Court had been made to “ascertain whether the auction price should be calculated in accordance with a sterling valuation [of the land and properties] or in Turkish lira”.
“The original asking price earlier this year was [equivalent to] £1.5 million,” he said. “Now, after many failed auctions, the asking price is about three million TL [equivalent to around £600,000].
“So the asking price is continuously diminishing because of the weakening Turkish lira.
“There are 13 owners there who are very desperate, trying to save their homes. And the . . . mortgage secured against the site remains.
“Deputy Prime Minister Serdar Denktaş really tried to help the buyers and took a proposal to the Council of Ministers to pay off the mortgage, make the property state-owned and then rent it out on very long . . . leases. But the proposal was never approved. The buyers are going to have a very anxious wait during the Christmas and New Year holidays.”