John is a retired banker from Essex who came to Cyprus in 1988, looked long and hard at what was on offer and eventually settled on Kamares village in the hills behind Paphos, paying £110,950 for a three-bed villa with a pool in a half-acre plot. The house is now worth £420,000, and the couple spend four months here every year in spring and autumn with their children and grandchildren. John is justifiably proud of his home, which is decorated in pale colours, with the odd bronze of a Greek athlete dotted about.

To guarantee their privacy, the Whites bought a double plot but built on only one. The house has three bedrooms and two bathrooms, and a soaring, barn-style living room with beams. It costs £1,300 a year to maintain, which in the grand scheme of things is extraordinarily cheap. John says: “We sit on the terrace at sunset, admiring the sunset and watching the bee-eaters fly over. It’s brilliant.”

The Whites’ story is a success but, make no mistake, buying a house in Cyprus can be a minefield. Drive out from the airport and there will be signs everywhere for “Unscrupulos and Sons, Builders”. Do not be tempted, unless you put your money with one of the big players.

One developer I spoke to told me there were between 600 and 700 property developers on the island and of those only ten were worth bothering with. Yiannis Kalyvites, sales and marketing manager of Cybarco, said: “An awful lot of firms have been in business for only five or six years, essentially one-man operations, or one man and his sons — and there have been problems with those guys. There are a lot of inexperienced people in this business, and it shows.”

But, caveat emptor apart, there are obvious advantages to buying here — 340 days of sun a year, a stable political climate (if you avoid the north, of course), no language barrier, since most Cypriots speak English, attractive tax advantages and year-round flights. Prices are still much lower than the South of France or Spain, and the investment appeal is obvious. You can get a three-bed villa with its own pool for about £250,000 and prices rose by 18 per cent in 2004. They are also predicted to rise significantly when Cyprus adopts the euro and when the new airport is completed in 2008.

That’s not to say the place is all gorgeous, because it is not. Cypriot builders have done some pretty dreadful things to their island. The ribbon that stretches five miles along the Limassol front, for instance, is particularly unattractive. Who on earth allowed all those lap-dancing clubs and unattractive shoebox shops, some selling fur coats? And there seems to be a contest going on for who can have the biggest satellite TV dish. The Russians win hands down — theirs are 3.5 metres across.

Head for the hills, however, and good sense has largely prevailed. If it is the show-off factor you are after, then Cybarco’s development of luxury villas at Aphrodite Hills is for you. The company decided to concentrate on the upper end of the market, building well-thought-out homes on prime sites away from the coast, with good views and high-spec finishes.

There are a range of properties at the Aphrodite complex — flats, townhouses and large villas around that particularly British obsession, a huge golf course. There is also an InterContinental hotel, a tennis academy, a shopping complex and a spa. It’s much cooler up here than down by the coast — you can tell that by the carob trees bent sideways by the wind.

The flats and townhouses (from £247,000 and £300,000 respectively) were perfectly nice and well finished, but my money would be on the detached three-bed villa (£350,000) with a galleried living room, cherrywood kitchen with granite worktops, and a large heated swimming pool. All the houses I saw had an appealing, if rather surprising, Tuscan style about them.

Sixty-five per cent of buyers at Aphrodite Hills are British, with the rest divided between Cypriots, Dutch and Belgians, and only 10 per cent of any plot is built on, which makes for a spacious feel. In Spain that figure is as high as 45 per cent. Thirty per cent of owners rent their homes out in a letting market that lasts 25 weeks of the year.

Buyers also get five years’ free membership of the tennis academy and spa. “There are no golf widows here,” says Nicos Christoforou, sales manager. “People want to be busy and healthy. They play golf and tennis, go walking and take part in water sports. We are selling an active lifestyle as well as a house.” ()

Julius Nehorai and his wife, Rose, are selling their spectacular clifftop villa here for £935,240. The couple have really gone for it with the house, which has sea views on three sides, putting in an infinity pool, a ten-seater dining room, a home cinema and air-conditioning hidden in the ceilings. Julius says he will be sorry to leave Cyprus (his business interests are taking him elsewhere). “It’s a beautiful island, with really friendly people and excellent food.”

Where Aphrodite Hills is flashy, Kamares has more of a village feel. It, too, is high in the hills, overlooking the coast, from Paphos to Coral Bay, and was built by Leptos Estates, which has eight developments on the west coast. Kamares has been established for 20 years and it shows in the tumbling waterfalls of pelargoniums in every windowbox, vines as thick as drainpipes, and the heady background of birdsong from the half a million trees planted by the developers. The signature of each property is a huge terracotta pot, prettily set into the thick stone wall. Spend £200,000 with Leptos and you will get an individually designed three-bedroom villa with a pool, or you can splash out £500,000 for a bespoke four or five-bedroom version.

“Aphrodite Hills is very smart, but we like to think we’re a bit less formal, says Michael Cartwright, the company’s genial marketing manager. Cartwright confirms that buying in Cyprus can be tricky unless you stick to some rules. “Things can go wrong for the most cautious of people. It happened to me when I first came here over 20 years ago.”

Cartwright and his Cypriot wife, Erasmia, bought a villa from a builder, only to find that the builder did not have planning permission for the house and was heavily in debt to the bank, which therefore claimed part of the property. “It took us 15 years to get our title deeds. It was a nightmare,” says Cartwright. So what does he think of the assertion that only ten of the building firms on the island are worth using? “I’d say it was a lot fewer than that, frankly.”

Cybarco: 020-8371 9700, www.cybarco.com

Leptos Estates: 00357-26 880100, www.leptos.com.cy

For Aphrodite Hills inspection trips: www.golfingcy.com

For further information about Julius Nehorai’s house, call 07956 305382 or e-mail julius.n@dial.pipex.com

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