Real estate salesman Michael Cartwright wasn’t sure he’d still have a job when he flew back to Cyprus from London in December.
His company, Leptos Estates, is struggling to sell vacation homes on the Mediterranean island to British buyers after the pound lost almost a quarter of its value against the euro and U.K. unemployment climbed to a nine-year high.
Two thousand miles away, Cyprus is feeling the aftershocks of the end of a British housing binge. Prices for apartments in the resort towns of Paphos and Paralimni fell as much as 25 percent in the past four months, after more than doubling since 2002, according to data compiled by broker Antonis Loizou & Associates Ltd. in Nicosia. Building permits for homes on the island, a gauge of future housing starts, declined 2.4 percent during the first 11 months of last year.
