ATHENS –
All of Greece’s land registration offices (“ypothikofilakia”) are now shut down and their services moved online to the National Cadaster (Ktimatologio), in a historic transition for a service that has been trying to modernize its records of property ownership.
It is expected to have all Greek properties registered by the end of 2025, the Digital Governance Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
The land registration offices in Greece totaled 392, of which 201 shut down in 2024. All services to register, transfer, and manage properties moved online (https://www.ktimatologio.gr/), putting an end to long waiting lines and complicated procedures. Digitization has allowed access to registrations by lawyers also.
Established by a 2018 law, the Cadaster’s digitization is funded by the Recovery Fund. Currently it is at 45% of completion (280 million pages), the e-governance ministry said.
New services, results
According to the ministry, all sales and purchases of properties submitted as of January 2024 through the Ktimatologio’s akinita.gov.gr portal were completed within 1 working day.
In addition, the percentage of property registrations rose to 60%, with 100% expected to be completed by the end of 2025.
The ministry highlighted the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in speeding up processes. The Cadaster is the first government agency to implement an AI system for the issue of administrative decisions, the ministry said. The first returns have shown a more than doubling of the number of weekly decisions issued from September 2024, when the law was introduced, to the present.
“With the final closure of 392 land registration offices throughout Greece, we are taking a major step in helping citizens, reducing bureaucracy, and upgrading the level of property transaction security,” Digital Governance Minister Dimitris Papastergiou said.
Deputy Minister Constantinos Kyranakis noted that “our absolute priority was and remains to serve citizens properly and provide easy access to information on their property.” The confusion created in the parallel system of both land registry offices (ypothikofilakia) and Cadaster offices (ktimatologio) “belongs to the past,” he added, with a single entity for all property transactions in Greece.