I catalogue university records for a living, and my parents are buying in Cyprus, which made me the family researcher.
The first month I did what everyone does: opened listings every evening and formed opinions. Useless. What changed the search was treating the purchase as a document problem rather than a shopping problem.
Three questions I now ask before anything else. Who is the registered owner, and does that name match the person selling. What is attached to the title — a right of way, a shared well, an unpaid utility. What exactly is being transferred: the plot, the building, the pool that was added later without permission.
Two of the houses we liked failed on the third question. One had a terrace built over a boundary, which nobody mentions in a photograph. We found the shortlist on tranio.com/cyprus/ and eliminated most of it on paper, before anybody drove anywhere.
None of this is exciting. Neither is an archive, and both keep you out of trouble.
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