Buying in Cyprus: A Cypriot developer has opened an office in Dublin selling a mix of holiday homes. Frances O'Rourke reports
A major Cypriot developer, Cybarco, has opened an office on Fitzwilliam Place in Dublin 2 and is pitching apartments and villas in two upmarket developments directly at Irish buyers.
The properties are for sale from plans in Aphrodite Hills in Paphos and in Amathusa Coastal Heights in Limassol. They range in price from €160,000 up to close to €1 million.
A handful of Irish buyers have already bought properties in Aphrodite Hills, a major golf and leisure resort just outside Paphos which launched in 2002. About 36 properties are left for sale there out of a total 800 properties being built on the 578-acre site. They cost from around €368,000.
Amathusa Coastal Heights is a much newer development on the eastern side of the island, by the sea: there, the first 60 of a total of 250 apartments, townhouses and villas are being sold from plans from about €160,000 and should be ready by March 2007.
Cyprus has long been popular with English buyers: English is spoken everywhere and people drive on the left. Irish buyers may find this a bonus too, but most are likely to be attracted by the warm winters, property and inheritance laws pretty much like our own (you buy freehold), and promises of good capital appreciation as well as steady rental returns. (Cybarco says that Cyprus led the way in growth in property capital appreciation between 1996 and 2005, with a jump in values of 65 per cent, compared to a mere 48 per cent for Ireland.)
As for rentals, Cybarco's sales and marketing manager Yiannis Kalyvites says that investors could expect to get 25 to 30 weeks' rental a year, with returns of 6 to 9 per cent. Buyers can get a mortage in Cyprus of up to 70 per cent of the cost of a property.
Cyprus joined the EU in 2004 and is to adopt the euro at the beginning of 2008 - the island's currency is still the Cyprus pound.
Cybarco's properties are a wide mix. At Aphrodite Hills, there are two and three-bedroom terraced villas in a part of the complex called Hestiades Greens, right beside the golf course. The developer is offering buyers of these units, which come with their own swimming pools, a 4 per cent guaranteed rental return over three years - or instead, a free furnishing package worth up to €35,000. Prices for furnished landscaped villas range from €481,000 to over €613,000.
The other units available in Aphrodite Hills are in a section called Adonis Village: one, two and three-bedroom apartments and townhouses with private terraces, patios or gardens are built around a traditional-style Cypriot square with a communal pool and have views either towards the sea or over the dramatic ravine that cuts through the centre of the golf course. These cost from around €368,500 to €483,200.
The most expensive units at Aphrodite Hills - two-storey, three-bedroom villas - with large gardens and private pools - cost over €800,000.
The beachfront properties at the Amathusa development in Limassol consist of one and two-bedroom apartments from close to €160,000, three-bedroom terraced houses from €346,398 and three-bedroom villas from €516,283. The developers promise that all units will have unobstructed sea views.
Amathusa is about 45 minutes' drive from Larnaca airport, Aphrodite about 30 minutes' from Paphos. There are weekly charter flights from Dublin to Larnaca from May to October, and daily flights to both airports from London.
www.cybarco.com
