Two chaps with a generous budget are Paul Bainbridge, 47, and Craig Hulme, 36, from Manchester. They have just moved into a seven-bedroom house at Kamares with separate guest cottage. They were offered £700,000 for it — before they’d finished the pool or the interior — and Bainbridge reckons that by the end of this year it will be valued at £1.2m. They are still working on the 3,000sq m of terraced land and are renovating the interior of the nine-year-old house. He won’t say how much they paid for it: informed locals put the figure at about £420,000.

After selling his 16 high-street travel agents, Bainbridge and Hulme (who sold his kitchen company) travelled the world looking for a “tax beneficial” haven for their early retirement and were drawn to Cyprus, where they “saw the amazing sunsets and fell in love with the place”.

Bainbridge and Hulme are actually saving money. “When we left and I cancelled my direct debits, it was horrific to see how much life in England cost,” Bainbridge says. “At home my mobile bills could be £400 to £500. Here, my last bill was £7. Cyprus has one of the cheapest phone systems for mobiles and land lines.”

So you don’t need a wedge the size of Bainbridge and Hulme’s to move to Cyprus, though anybody planning to live on a pension should be aware that tax changes may be afoot. “In Cyprus, they believe EU membership will not affect the double taxation treaty,” says Bill Blevins of chartered accountants Blevins Franks International. “But I think Cyprus will change its tax rules to be more in line with European rates.”

Meanwhile, house prices are rising. The big beachfront villas already built at Possidon (four beds, four baths, double-height reception room, marble floors, pool and as close to the sea as the coastline protection laws allow) went for £360,000. The cheapest in the next phase of identical houses is £410,000. You can get a linked detached villa in Cybarco’s Konia village, inland from Paphos, for £143,000 or a three-bed, three-bath villa with pool — detached but close to its neighbours — at Possidon for £224,000.

And that’s just the south and west coasts. As one frequent visitor to Cyprus remarked: “What’s going to happen when the island is reunified?” referring to the other imminent political change — the reopening of the underdeveloped Turkish-controlled area to the entrepreneurial zeal of the Cypriots. “That’s where all the best places are.”

Anassa Hotel 00 357 26 88 80 00, www.thanoshotels.com; Cybarco 020 8371 9700, www. cybarco.com; Lanitis: Premier Resorts 020 8940 9406; Leptos 020 8340 8096, www.leptosestates.com; Possidon Beach Gardens: Antonis Loizou 00 357 2465 7067, www.possidon.com

Island buys
One of the first villas on Aphrodite Hills, 20 minutes from Paphos, this three-bedroom “Era” design villa with pool is for sale with Cybarco (020 8371 9700, www.cybarco.com for £330,000

This three-bedroom villa with a pool on the completed first phase of Possidon Beach Gardens, 15 minutes from Larnaca airport, is for sale with Antonis Loizou (00 357 24 65 70 67, www.possidon.com) for £190,000

This four-bedroom villa with two reception rooms and a private pool on the Kamares development, 10 minutes from Paphos and the beach, is for sale with Leptos (020 8340 8096, www.leptosestates.com) for £550,000

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