Buying Crete Property - Appoint Lawyer

So unless you are going to do it yourself, you need to appoint a lawyer to act on your behalf. The duties that they will need to carry out on your behalf are varied but the most common ones are:

• Confirm property title is good
• Pay over the deposit to the seller
• Sign all the forms on your behalf for Property Purchase Tax
• Attend any Pre-Contract Meetings
• Check that the Contract truly represents your best interests
• Sign the Contract on your behalf
• Disburse payments of the contract sum and all expenses

We work with lots of different lawyers and have a panel of English speaking lawyers that we can recommend to you. They are based in Agios Nikolaos, Ierapetra and Sitia. For obvious reasons we cannot recommend the lawyer that we use as a business. In the end, the choice is yours. Should you choose to use a your own choice of lawyer who is not on our panel, the chances are that we will know them anyway, as this is a very small community. Lawyers in Greece are non-specialist and act as solicitors and advocates, so have a mixed practice of office and Court work. Most work in small offices, without administrative assistance.

Once you have decided which lawyer you wish to use you have to empower them to act for you. This entails a visit to a Notary who will enact a Power of Attorney which enables the lawyer to act as if they were you in property matters, under your instruction. Whilst you can enact this Power of Attorney in any Greek Consulate, it is much easier and cheaper to enact it at one of the local Notaries here. The Notaries that we normally use here charge between 30 and 50 euros. You will normally pay at least double that in a Consulate.

We will hold your hand through this process, which can be quite frightening the first time that you do it. We will introduce you to the Notary and most times will act as translator as all documents have to be written in Greek. Once you have completed this part of the process there is no need for you to return to Crete prior to the property being yours. You have completed your part of the process and can leave the rest of it to the professionals that you have appointed.