Land registers in EU countries

Greece

Greece has an electronic land register known as the Cadastre (κτηματολόγιο)in areas where land registration has been completed. Local mortgage registries (υποθηκοφυλακεία) are also operating provisionally as land registries (κτηματολογικά γραφεία). Under Law 2664/1998 on the Hellenic Cadastre, land register data may be stored and updated only electronically in areas where the Cadastre has been operating since 2003, replacing the previous system of property transfers and mortgages. The land register database is stored centrally for the whole country by the company Ktimatologio (Κτηματολόγιο Α.Ε.) and is updated by the local land registries based on their transactions.

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What does the Greek property data and document storage system offer?

One or more registries operate within the jurisdiction of each district civil court (ειρηνοδικείο) and offer the following services by law:

registration, attachment and seizure of property within their jurisdiction;
transfer of acts that must be transferred by law; and
registration of lawsuits and any other acts or notes relating to property.

There are 17 stipendiary and 378 gratis mortgage registries.

Stipendiary mortgage registries (έμμισθα υποθηκοφυλακεία) operate under the Ministry of Justice, Transparency and Human Rights. On the islands of Rhodes and Kos, the Rhodes and Kos-Leros land registries, where the property transfer system is based on land, provide services for the Ministry of Justice.

Gratis mortgage registries (άμισθα υποθηκοφυλακεία) are either:

specialised (ειδικά), run by a registrar (υποθηκοφύλακας) appointed by the Minister for Justice after passing a competitive examination; or
non-specialised (μη ειδικά), run by a notary appointed to the registry.

Contact details for the above mortgage registries may be found on the website of the Greek Ministry of Justice, Transparency and Human Rights.

Furthermore, there is an institutional framework in Greece for the study, development and operation of the Hellenic Cadastre (Εθνικό Κτηματολόγιο) for property. This task has been assigned to the private company Ktimatologio.

The Hellenic Cadastre is a unified system, guaranteed by the State, for recording legal, technical and other information on property and associated rights.

In particular, the Hellenic Cadastre:

records all acts creating, transferring, altering or removing rights on property. Each act is recorded only after being thoroughly checked, so that no act is recorded if a person transferring a property is not the person listed in the land register as owner of the property;
records a geographical description (form, location and size) of the property;
systematically records public property; and
records rights of usufruct.

Land registration is already complete in 333 areas of the country. 96 local mortgage registries (stipendiary and gratis) are provisionally operating as land registries.

Legal database

Basic information about the Hellenic Cadastre may be found on its website.

Is access to Greek property data storage services free of charge?

In areas where land registries are operating provisionally, computers available free of charge at the relevant offices may be used to search for data electronically.

Under the NSRF, the company Ktimatologio has been commissioned to develop a project for digital document transmission for mortgage registries, with a view to completion of land registration in the rest of the country. The project includes creating infrastructure for: (a) online submission of acts for entry in land register records; and (b) online submission and processing of requests for certificates from those records.

Relevant provisions are included in draft legislation prepared by the Ministry of the Environment, Energy and Climate Change.

History of the Greek property data and document storage system

A system of land registration was first provided for in Law 41/1836. The authorities referred to above have kept land records ever since land registration began.

In areas where land registration is being completed, local mortgage registries have been operating as provisional land registries ever since the Mapping and Cadastral Organisation of Greece (Οργανισμός Κτηματολογίου και Χαρτογραφήσεων Ελλάδος – ΟΚΧΕ) decided to create the Cadastre. Since that time, transactions in land register records have been recorded solely by electronic means.

How to search for data

The electronic land registration system allows searches by: (a) personal data; (b) Hellenic Cadastre code; and/or (c) property address.