Leonidio Legal

Why the square metres on a Leonidio deed are not the square metres on the cadastre

Dimitris Kogkas Avatar
Dimitris Kogkas

You asked for the papers. The broker sent a scan of a notarial contract from 1974, or 1989, or 2003. In the recitals the house is “about eighty square metres,” or “a two-storey stone dwelling of 95 sq.m. with a courtyard.” The price is already in your head as a figure per metre.

You have not yet seen the cadastre.

On a stone house above Leonidio, or in a village of South Kynouria, the metres in that old contract and the metres on the current cadastral sheet are often two different numbers. That is not a rounding error the notary will “align on the day.” It is a geometry file: a survey, a diagram that the Hellenic Cadastre will accept, and, if the change touches a neighbour, a notice that neighbour can answer. It is not a listing correction.

This note is for the buyer who has found the house and has not yet wired the deposit. It is not a how-to for a boundary fight with the next terrace, and it is not the unknown-owner file. If the extract names no proprietor at all — unknown owner (άγνωστος ιδιοκτήτης) — that is a different file: an ownership blank, not a metre gap.

Two papers, two numbers

The deed (συμβόλαιο) is the notarial contract that last transferred the property — sale, parental gift, partition, acceptance of an inheritance. It describes what the parties then thought they were transferring. In older Arcadia contracts the area is often approximate, taken from an earlier deed, a municipal record, or a survey that was never tied to the national grid.

The papers you actually need next are not another scan of that contract. They are two cadastre products, both issued remotely with TAXISnet codes:

  • the copy of the cadastral sheet (αντίγραφο κτηματολογικού φύλλου): the current legal sheet — who is named as proprietor and in what share, what burdens sit on the property, what lawsuits have been recorded, and which contracts or judgments those entries rest on;
  • the extract of the cadastral diagram (απόσπασμα κτηματολογικού διαγράμματος): the map that shows this plot in its street or hillside, with the National Cadastre Code Number (KAEK).

The official registry of procedures (MITOS) is plain about the difference. The sheet is the legal state of the property. The diagram is the drawing. The diagram extract is also the paper that must travel with every later application to register a new act on that property. If you have the deed and not those two, you have a story about metres, not the metres the Cadastre will transfer.

You need the extended KAEK — the parcel number plus the vertical and horizontal unit numbers, sixteen digits in the form the Cadastre uses. MITOS records the usual error: the wrong KAEK produces a certificate for a different property, and the application cannot be cancelled or rewritten. You pay again. You do not get the house you thought you had pulled.

The sheet copy carries a flat fee of €9.50, plus €4.50 for each extra sheet after the first. The diagram extract is €15. Both are payable by card or web banking. MITOS’s digital estimate, on the pages opened on 19 August 2026, is six days. That is an estimate, not a promise, and it is not a reason to send a deposit while you wait.

Why the two numbers part company in South Kynouria

A deed from before the cadastre was operating in that settlement describes a house the way a notary then described houses: by neighbours, by a path, by “about” a number of metres. The first cadastral registration, when the area was put on the national map, is a different measurement. It is a plot on the Hellenic Geodetic Reference System of 1987 (ΕΓΣΑ ’87), drawn against the adjoining parcels that were declared at the same time.

Those two operations were not required to produce the same number. The old contract may have measured the building and omitted the courtyard; the cadastre may have measured the land and given the building a separate unit. A terrace that has always been used with the house may sit on the neighbour’s KAEK. A strip that the family walls in may never have been in the deed at all. We do not have a published local count of how often this happens in Leonidio, and we will not invent one. If you have not put the two numbers next to each other, you have not opened the file.

A municipal tax bill, an electricity meter and years of the annual property tax (ENFIA) follow the description someone once gave the tax authority. They do not rewrite the cadastral diagram.

What the Cadastre will actually accept

The Hellenic Cadastre does not correct metres by a sentence in the next sale contract. For areas where the cadastre is already in operation, a change to the drawing is a diagram of geometric changes (διάγραμμα γεωμετρικών μεταβολών, ΔΓΜ).

The Cadastre’s own technical specifications (version 1.2, September 2024), opened on 19 August 2026, define that diagram by Article 14(4) of Law 2664/1998. It is the drawing that shows how the boundaries on the cadastral maps will move. Those maps change in two situations the specifications name, and only those two:

  • a later registrable act is filed — a new notarial contract, a partition, a constitution of separate ownership — under Article 12 and Article 6(4) of Law 2664/1998;
  • or an application to correct the geometric data of the parcels is filed, under Articles 18, 19 and 20 of the same law.

That is the official split, and it is the only split this note uses. Article 6(4), on the text the Cadastre itself cites, is the path that travels with a later act. We have not opened a current consolidated Article 6 on search.et.gr. Until we have, we will not tell you that Article 6 is a spare key the notary presses on completion day. The correction of area, dimensions and boundaries — the file you are looking at when the deed says 80 and the sheet says something else — is, on the Cadastre’s own wording, the application under Articles 18, 19 and 20. The specifications do not, in the pages opened, further divide those three articles into “office only” and “court only.” This note will not invent that division.

A second official product sits next to the ΔΓΜ. When the correction is not a quiet office filing but a court pleading under Law 2664/1998 — an action, an application, an appeal — the engineer files a topographic diagram of geometric changes (τοπογραφικό διάγραμμα γεωμετρικών μεταβολών, ΤΔΓΜ). Law 4409/2016, Article 40, put both families of diagram into the Cadastre’s electronic store. A ministerial decision in Government Gazette B’ 2216/14.6.2018, as the specifications record it, made electronic filing of ordinary diagrams compulsory from 16 July 2018; Government Gazette D’ 4765/24.12.2019 did the same for the court diagrams from 27 January 2020. The engineer signs the files digitally. The system issues a unique Electronic Diagram Code (ΚΗΔ). There is no paper-only shortcut that a Leonidio notary can substitute on a Friday afternoon.

The Cadastre’s worked examples, on the same official site, treat a correction of geometric data as a change to area and dimensions. Where that change carves into an adjoining parcel, the drawing must show the claimed strip and the strip that is cut away, and it must show the new closed boundary of every affected KAEK, not only yours. A house that has “always used” the neighbour’s terrace is, on that drawing, a file that neighbour can see.

None of this is a price negotiation. It is a surveyor who works in ΕΓΣΑ ’87, a diagram the Cadastre will load, and time for anyone whose metres move. Measure it in months.

What this is not

Keep this separate from the other Leonidio gap, which buyers mix up because both appear on the same extract.

Unknown owner (άγνωστος ιδιοκτήτης) is an ownership file: the first registration did not name a proprietor. That is a different note. Geometry does not fill a blank proprietor. A blank proprietor does not fix the metres. If the sheet already says unknown owner, stop. Do not send a deposit on the promise that the metres and the name will be sorted together.

A new notarial contract in your name does not, by itself, make the cadastral metres match the deed. If the Cadastre still shows a different shape, you would be buying the seller’s description, not the registered plot. A bank, a later buyer and a short-term-rental file will read the sheet, not the 1989 recitals.

What that means for your deposit

A deposit is money you may not see again if, on completion day, the diagram still disagrees with the contract you thought you were buying.

If the deed metres and the cadastre metres are not the same:

  • do not wire a deposit on the sentence “the notary will put the correct metres in the new contract”;
  • do not accept a price built as a figure per deed-metre, or per “usable” metre, until a surveyor has explained the gap against the current diagram;
  • do not treat ENFIA, a building permit, or the fact that the family has always occupied the terrace as a substitute for the two cadastre papers.

A seller who already has a ΔΓΜ or a ΤΔΓΜ with an Electronic Diagram Code, and who can show what the adjoining owners were asked to say, is a seller you can keep talking to. A seller who has “a deed” and a hope is telling you the geometry file has not been opened.

The three questions to ask in writing

Send these to the broker, and ask for written answers from the seller, before any reservation agreement:

1. What do the current cadastre papers say? Attach the copy of the cadastral sheet and the extract of the cadastral diagram, both with the extended KAEK. What area do they show for the land, and what area for any building unit? If you cannot see those two papers, there is no purchase to discuss.

2. If the deed metres and the cadastre metres differ, which path is already open? Is this a later registrable act under Article 6(4) — a new contract that will change the drawing — or an application to correct geometric data under Articles 18, 19 and 20? Is there already a ΔΓΜ or a ΤΔΓΜ with a ΚΗΔ? Which adjoining KAEKs move, and have those owners been identified?

3. Who pays, and what happens to my money if the diagram is still wrong on the day we were meant to complete? Who pays the surveyor, the diagram fees and any court or office filing? In writing: if a neighbour objects, if the Cadastre will not load the diagram, or if the metres on the sheet still do not match the contract — is the deposit returned in full, and on what date?

A seller who can answer those three is a seller you can keep talking to. A seller who answers with “they always measured it that way” is telling you the file has not been opened.

The file we open first

On a named stone house in Leonidio or South Kynouria, the first papers are the cadastre sheet, the cadastral diagram, and the deed, read against a survey that explains any gap between them. If the gap is only metres, it is this file. If the proprietor field is blank, it is the other one.

You do not have to come to Leonidio for that reading. The extract does.

This article is general information on Greek law as of 19 August 2026. It is not legal advice for a particular purchase.

Sources and version dates

Read on 19 August 2026. Only official state sources; no private-site links.