A call for help

TDT | Manama

A call for help to Bahrain’s authorities has gone out from 53 apartment owners embroiled in a property case that has remained unsettled for nearly five years. The apartment owners, who include both Bahraini and foreign investors, are still awaiting the title deeds for the property they had purchased in a building in Seef District.

All the owners had completed their due payments for their apartments before June 2015, but nearly five years later, they still have not received the legal documents establishing their ownership.

The owners had also recently discovered that the land’s mother deed was used by the developer and the Bahraini landowner to secure a mortgage loan with a foreign bank in 2016, one year after the full sale of the apartments.

The Bahraini landowner was the guarantor for the mortgage. The apartment owners have been desperately striving to obtain their rightful title deeds but have been caught between the three parties – the developer, Bahraini guarantor and the bank – without a resolution.

The developer has filed for bankruptcy and the court has appointed an expert to evaluate the situation and prepare their findings to report to the court for further action.

When contacted by TDT, one of the close relatives of the construction company’s owner said that she knew little about the company and is, therefore, unable to assist in settling the case.

Meanwhile, a close associate of the company told TDT that, to his knowledge, the owners of the apartments had paid management fees for the first two to three years but stopped after they discovered there are no title deeds and that the building was being very badly managed.

Furthermore, there was no maintenance in the last two years, and more recently electricity and water bills were not paid by the developer so the owners had to pay them themselves to avoid electricity being cut off to the lifts and common areas.

The owners cannot pay any management fees directly to the bank and have no guarantee of getting any title deeds. The developer has not completed the paperwork with the land registry to allow the land title deed to be split into 53 titles, he noted.

On top of that, the associate added, there is commercial space in the building that cannot be sold as it has no building approvals by authorities. It is also not clear who currently owns the space.

In light of this, the apartment owners are kindly requesting the concerned authorities and legal entities in the Kingdom to promptly assist them in obtaining their title deeds, after struggling through convoluted legal systems without any result over the past five years.