Sales in Paphos, a popular tourist destination in southwest Cyprus, west of Limassol, have risen by 25% in recent months, the news website reports, quoting property industry experts, including George Leptos of the Paphos-based developers the Leptos Group. Leptos is also head of the Paphos Chamber of Commerce (EVE).
The article notes that Phaphos’s property market, which boomed after British buyers began snapping up its luxury residences, collapsed in 2009 as a result of the global financial, crisis coupled with the effects of a so-called “title deeds scandal”, in which buyers who had paid in full for their properties were never given the necessary ownership documents, making re-sales difficult.
One measure of the interest in that Cypriot property sellers have in Chinese buyers may be seen in billboards along the main roads of Paphos, which, according to the Cyprus Property News report, have begun advertising properties for sale in Chinese.
Sophia Charalambous of Korantina Homes told the publication that Cypriot developers have been actively targeting the Chinese market.
“We have various offices in China, and we regularly attend various property exhibitions,” Charalambous said.
The result, she added, is that “all of our sales in recent months have been to Chinese clients.”