- Every jointly-owned building in Cyprus moves through the same lifecycle: handover → a transition period the developer manages → a management committee elected by the owners → the handover of management to that committee.
- Under the Immovable Property Law (Cap. 224), the common parts are run by a management committee elected by the owners at a general meeting, and common expenses are shared by each unit's ownership share — the percentage recorded on the title deed.
- The weak point is the transition period: between physical handover and the committee taking over, the developer is the building's de facto manager — often with no system built for the job.
- A bill now before the Cyprus parliament (not yet law) would tighten this phase: committees formed much earlier, an EOA register and oversight, a mandatory reserve fund, broader insurance and fee-clearance certificates on resale.
- Whatever the final shape of the law, the practical need is the same today — a transparent, per-unit record of charges, documents and maintenance from the first day residents move in.
The day a Cyprus development is handed over is treated as a finish line. In reality it is the start of a second, longer job: running the building. Someone has to collect the common expenses, keep the insurance current, fix the lift when it fails and keep a record every owner can trust — and for a long stretch after handover, that someone is usually the developer.
This guide follows a jointly-owned building through its lifecycle: who is responsible at each stage under current Cyprus law, where the transition period tends to break down, what the bill before parliament would change, and the practical record a developer needs to keep from day one. It is general information, not legal advice.
Handover
Units are delivered and residents move in. The building is alive and generating running costs — cleaning, lighting, lifts, insurance — long before title deeds are issued.
Transition period
No committee has taken over yet, so the developer is the building's de facto manager: collecting common expenses, holding the documents and handling maintenance.
Management committee elected
The owners form a management committee at a general meeting. It gains the statutory right to set and collect common expenses and to pursue arrears.
Transfer of management
The developer hands the building over to the committee — ideally with a clean record of budgets, charges, payments and documents. A messy handover here becomes the committee's problem.
Who runs the building — and what Cap. 224 says today
Under the Immovable Property Law, Cap. 224, a jointly-owned building is run by a management committee elected by the owners at a general meeting. The committee administers the common parts, sets and collects the common expenses, and has a statutory right to pursue owners who fall into arrears. Common expenses are shared by each unit's ownership share — the percentage recorded on the title deed — unless the owners agree on another basis, so a larger unit pays proportionally more.
In other words, the law is clear about who should run the building and how the costs are split. For the mechanics of what those charges cover, the realistic ranges and how they are calculated and collected, see our guide to service charges in Cyprus.
The transition period: the phase nobody designed for
The gap in practice is not who runs the building once a committee exists — it is the stretch before one does. Between physical handover and the moment an elected committee actually takes over, someone still has to run the building, and in practice that someone is the developer. It is a real responsibility with almost no rulebook, handled more often than not on tools that were never built for it:
- No single record of who owes what. Charges are tracked in a spreadsheet or someone's head, so arrears build up unnoticed until they are large.
- Opaque calculations. Common expenses are collected informally — a message, a bank transfer, no invoice — and owners can't see how their share was worked out.
- Scattered documents. The insurance policy, maintenance contracts, warranties and meter readings live across different inboxes and phones.
- Lost maintenance. Issues are reported by phone and forgotten; there is no record of what was fixed, by whom, or when.
- Unsold units the developer never bills itself for. As the owner of its unsold units, the developer owes their share of the common expenses — but in practice it rarely issues itself an invoice, so the building's budget is quietly subsidised and under-funded.
None of this is unique to one building. It is the predictable result of running a responsibility this serious on spreadsheets and messaging apps — and it is exactly the mess that a clean handover to the committee is supposed to avoid.
What the coming reform would change
A bill now before the House of Representatives would rewrite how jointly-owned buildings are managed, supervised and funded — but it is a bill, not yet law, and proposals under discussion suggest a transition period of up to two years. In short, it would:
- Require a management committee much earlier — from a valid building and subdivision permit, rather than only after the building is registered with the Land Registry.
- Create a register of jointly-owned buildings and put district local government organisations (EOAs) in charge of supervision.
- Make a reserve (sinking) fund mandatory, so major repairs don't trigger a sudden one-off levy.
- Broaden compulsory insurance beyond today's cover, plus public liability insurance for the committee.
- Require a fee-clearance certificate before a unit can be resold while communal fees are outstanding.
The detail matters, and the bill is still moving, so we keep a continuously updated breakdown on a dedicated page: the new jointly-owned buildings law. Treat the list above as a summary, not legal advice.
Where Tektor fits
Whatever the final law says, the day-to-day need during the transition period is already clear: a transparent, per-unit record from the day residents move in. Tektor's MANAGE module is built for that phase:
- Service-charge billing per unit — you set the building's budget and issue the charges, and every invoice carries its own issue history and a Paid / Overdue / Pending status, so arrears are visible instead of accumulating silently.
- Announcements that reach every resident of a building at once.
- Maintenance requests tracked from report to resolution, so upkeep is documented.
- A buyer portal in English, Greek and Russian where each owner sees their unit, documents and announcements.
The billing is something you run, not an automated process: you decide the budget and when charges go out, and Tektor keeps the record. The same system also runs the phase before handover — construction, buyer payment plans and unit documents: see construction management software for property developers in Cyprus. Reserve-fund and insurance tracking and one-click fee-clearance certificates are on our roadmap for when the law takes effect — not claims about today.
