“In Those Days North Cyprus Felt Like A Sleeping Beauty”

Today we are going to meet with Sandra, the director of Landmark Estates and ask her how she has achieved her success and has managed to win the Best Estate Agency award since 2011.

 

• Firstly congratulations! Regarding the last award, you won Best Estate Agency (Gold) and Best Estate Agency Website (Platinum). To whom and to what do you owe your success?

Yes, it really is amazing! The competition in Cyprus is huge, but nevertheless Landmark Estates has won all the Propertync Awards (Platinum or Gold) for Best Estate Agency since 2011, which is a great honour and a huge responsibility! Thank you so much! Speaking about the last award of 2019 we would not have been able to win without having a solid and dedicated team working together. With their support, Landmark Estates became one of the market leaders in the property business. To be competitive, we offer extensive and additional extra services, free of charge, which are far beyond a normal sales procedure. As we are dealing with many foreigners, we want to be the trusted friend and advisor to support each customer individually through the whole process of purchasing a property.
Free legal advice, extensive after sales service, inspection trip, in-house S&A law advocates pre-checking property documents, property and land valuations - offering over 400+ property choices from different developers and builders, multilingual sales consultancy, participating with our partners at international property exhibitions, offering personal, house and car insurance and offering beautiful holiday homes for lettings...
To promote our wide range of properties, investment options, land and hotels we created the most advanced and functional webpage with the latest internet technology. Our professional webmasters are based in Portugal and have designed 5 individual webpages, all translated into: English, Russian, Swedish, Turkish and German. Our aim is to offer an informative webpage about Northern Cyprus, with a very detailed and honest resume of the island, the property market and the kind of lifestyle the island affords.

• We want to ask you when you came to Cyprus, why you came to Cyprus and what your experience is in living here?

I am originally from Germany and worked and lived in California, Cape Town South Africa, on the Canary Islands and cruised with a ship once around the world! I have seen many places and travelled a lot.
In 1997 I had the idea of establishing a business on my own. I was looking for an underdeveloped destination, where I could create something new and different. First I visited the island of Mallorca, which is beautiful, but it was already very expensive, over-filled with businesses, and the holiday season is very short. Later a friend suggested I should visit Northern Cyprus. I remember my first day walking in the evening through the tranquil romantic Kyrenia harbour with its stunning old castle, seeing locals sitting on their fishing boats, having dinner with family and friends. I instantly fell in love with this place! It felt like paradise! This must be happiness!
In those days Northern Cyprus felt like a sleeping beauty. I saw investment opportunities on every corner! It was amazing! I had found my place! At that time there was no proper supermarket, no cafes or bistros, very little entertainment, no diversity of shops for clothes, cars, furniture, construction materials, nothing! Only sheep, goats and olive trees everywhere. But most important – I felt in love with the people! Turkish Cypriots are the friendliest, most polite and honest people I have ever met, which is really becoming unique in this fast-moving world. I have now been living for 22 happy years on this wonderful island and it became my business to inspire foreigners to live and invest here. North Cyprus is the right place to live for families with children, retired people and also offers plenty of profitable investment return for business people. One of the top 3 safest places in Europe with the lowest crime rate. Where in the world can you find property prices starting from only £34.000 and a place that offers?! The property value increased in some areas by 300% more than over the past 15 years! So yes, I am very happy to live here and so are all our customers.

• What facilities do you offer to your customer, if someone comes and tells you they want to live in Kyrenia, what will you show them?

Landmark Estates is an independent estate agency and consultancy, which gives us the freedom to select wisely which properties we take on for sale and which builders or developers we can recommend to our foreign clients. Our strength is that Landmark Estates is specialised in resale properties with ready title deeds, taxes paid, mostly furnished, landscaped and ready to move in!
If a client is interested in visiting Northern Cyprus, we offer them an inspection trip to stay in a nice Boutique Hotel in the beautiful village of Bellapais. We take care of our customers from the moment they arrive on the island and guide them smoothly through the whole process of purchasing in North Cyprus. To receive an impression of this beautiful place, our duty is first to become a free of charge tourist agent, introducing the different areas and highlights to the clients, such as Kyrenia harbour, the Kyrenia region with its lovely beaches, great restaurants and lifestyle and different schools. 
In between, we view our favourite properties, which match the client’s criteria and budget; this is often discussed prior to their visit. Due to our large property portfolio with over 300 different property choices, we are able to offer all our clients a perfect home. We have properties ranging from a £25,000 studio apartment through to a million pound plus luxury villa.

• How can you explain to your foreign customers the different title deed system in Northern Cyprus? So we can have the oppurtinity to information our readers?

There are 4 types of title deeds available, of which 3 are freehold title deeds and 1 is leasehold. Some people believe it is a risk to purchase in North Cyprus and that this was a Greek island.
Pre- 1974 Clean Freehold Title is land in Northern Cyprus which was owned before 1974 by Turkish Cypriots, English expatriates and other nationalities.
Exchange title deed Many Greek Cypriots fled south in 1974 and Turkish Cypriots fled North, though in lesser numbers, both leaving behind their homes, land and buildings. The TRNC government have for many years operated an ‘exchange’ system, whereby Turkish Cypriots who left land and property behind in the South could register their ‘loss’ with the TRNC, and were instead awarded points enabling them to take over land and property in the North which was abandoned by Greek Cypriots fleeing south, on an ‘exchange’ basis.
Turkish Mainland Deed Land After the conflict, the TRNC awarded unoccupied land to war veterans or their families and invited citizens of mainland Turkey to re-settle in the TRNC in order to boost the population.
49 Year Leases Some properties has been offered by the TRNC on 49 year leases.

• What is your relationship with building contractors? Do you have some companies whose houses you can sell easily?

In general, we work with most of the leading construction companies in North Cyprus. Currently there are amazing holiday projects under construction in the areas of Esentepe, Lapta and Alsancak, İskele and Bafra and modern design city-type apartments in downtown Kyrenia and Famagusta.

• Again I want to return to the award night. You also won the Gold Award for your Mum’s house (Villa Jana). Can you please explain your legendary villa and why you earned this award...

Let me first take this opportunity to thank the jury of Propertync Awards for the award! I am personally very proud of this award, as the house was built by my family. Villa Jana is the first and only project of a sustainable eco-house combined with luxury in Northern Cyprus, built by Mr. Nurettin Çatal, Nurlife Construction. The idea was to take advantage of the local natural resources like the sun, wind and water, which is available in Cyprus throughout the year and build a more environmentally-friendly and energy-efficient property, using special material for this particular sustainable development.
The 400 sqm villa was built from special Ekobricks, which are Thermal. A 10 kW Photovoltaic (PV) power system on the roof, which was imported from Germany, converts sunlight directly into electricity and produces its own supply of electricity. This residential power system enables us to generate all our daily electrical energy requirement, exchanging daytime excess power for future energy needs. The underfloor heating system throughout the villa uses water from our own water well and is heated by electricity via a heat pump, using free electricity produced from our photovoltaic system. A 12x4 m indoor pool can be heated up to 33 degrees – using free electricity produced from our Photovoltaic system. The house benefits further from a steam bath and jacuzzi and still this villa runs on a zero electricity or water bill!
We hope that we could inspire some of the local builders and customers with our vision and hope that more and more people will take responsibility for our planet! This villa is available off plan and can be built tailor-made for you on any land of your choice!
For more information please contact us today: info@landmark-estate.com