The Greek Property Market is notably showing a come back and the property prices kept rising in Athens.

‘Kathimerini’ newspaper noted interesting stats last week, showing the Greek housing market and specifically property price increase in the fifth place among all the EU countries top performers (see next page graph) in the third quarter of 2019.

Kathimerini noted that according to figures released yesterday by Eurostat for the EU, only four countries recorded a bigger rate of increase than Greece, where the increase according to the Bank of Greece’s indexes stood at 9.1%.  Specifically, only Latvia (13.5%), Slovakia (11.5%), Luxembourg (11.3%) and Portugal (10.3%) noted higher price increases compared to the Greek housing market. It is diametrically opposed to the Greek housing market in previous years, when Eurostat’s price comparison was one of the few countries where prices fell.  It is noteworthy that the price rise in Greece accelerated during 2019.  In particular, based on the revised BofGr data, prices in the first quarter of 2019 increased by 5.3% on an annual basis, while in the second quarter, growth rose to 7.7%.  Overall, in the nine-month period of 2019 nationwide, the increase reached 7.4%, while in Athens the price rise was 10.3% in the same period. Accordingly, in 2018 the average rise had not exceeded 1.8%.

According to real estate experts, the inflow of funds from overseas to invest in the Greek real estate market, yet obtain the Greek Golden Visa, have played a decisive role in this recovery, which dates back to early 2018 with a strong growth especially at the last months of last year.

Specifically, in 2018 there was an increase of 172.1% in inflows to a total of € 1.12 billion, compared to € 414.7 million in 2017.  This trend continued in the first half of 2019 (latest data available), as there was a 94.6% increase to 736.6 million euros, from 378.5 million

euros in the corresponding period of the previous year.  This development is due to the continuous improvement of the performance of the Greek tourism industry, the improvement of the economic climate in Greece and the expectation of investors to further increase their return on capital thanks to the high resonance of the short-term leasing sector.

Overall, in the fourth quarter of 2017 and until the third quarter of 2019, property sales prices in Greece have recovered by 11.5%, recovering part of the 42.5% loss which had occurred during the economic crisis.  This is also the main reason why Alpha Bank’s analysis shows that house prices in Greece remain underestimated today.