The ambitious plan for the utilization of 25,000 properties, long stuck in the portfolios of banks and loan management companies, is being revived. The government is now allowing funds and servicers to proceed with the sale of these properties—even if all urban planning and legal formalities have not yet been finalized.

These are properties acquired through auctions that remain unexploited due to bureaucratic, planning, and legal obstacles—a large reserve that could, under the right conditions, become a goldmine for the market and offer relief to the housing sector.

A major obstacle is the slow operation of the Land Registry, where the registration of a property can take up to two years, creating insecurity for investors and citizens.

The time from when a property comes under bank ownership to when it becomes available for market sale ranges from eight months to four years, due to planning and legal complications, unauthorized constructions, and co-ownership issues.

The Properties

In recent years, the problem has worsened, with banks acquiring nearly 80% of successfully auctioned properties. This results in a growing stockpile of properties that are difficult to bring to market, with high management costs and lost sales opportunities.

According to industry estimates:

• Piraeus Bank and Intrum manage about 10,000 properties,
• doValue manages about 3,500–4,000,
• National Bank of Greece around 4,000,
• Eurobank approximately 1,800–2,000,
• Alpha Bank and Cepal roughly 2,500–3,000.

The remaining properties are managed by other banks and servicers.

Out of the approximately 25,000 properties under management, fewer than 500 are fully legalized, with no outstanding compliance issues (e.g. excessive building area or semi-outdoor spaces). About 10,000 more could be sold immediately, even with outstanding issues, as long as buyers are informed of the necessary legalizations and associated timelines.

Property Breakdown:

• 60% are located in Athens and Thessaloniki,
• 20% in other major urban areas,
• 20% in the regions.
  By type:
• 55% residential,
• 30–35% commercial,
• 10% land plots and farmland.

The Government’s Plan

The new plan includes the option for banks to finance buyers of auctioned properties using the property itself as collateral. This opens the market to smaller investors and individuals previously excluded due to high capital requirements.

The plan addresses four key stages of the currently time-consuming property acquisition process:

1. Pre-auction marketing and publicity process (1–6 months)
2. Auction process (1–12 months, depending on round)
3. Legalization and maturity of the property (12–18 months)
4. Commercial exploitation (6–36 months)

Key proposed interventions to reduce completion times:

• Shortening the time between auction rounds to one month through legal changes, tech upgrades, and automation—especially for properties stuck in long delays.
  – Combined with earlier price reductions starting in the second round.
  – Currently, price cuts of 15% and 20% come only in the third and fourth rounds, with 2–3 months delay between rounds.
• Special loan products offered by banks for property buyers.
• Faster resolution of legal challenges and appeals to reduce delays and increase process efficiency.
• Transferring legalization obligations to the buyer, in exchange for discounted purchase prices.
• Deferring technical compliance tasks to the buyer, post-purchase, supported by the property manager (servicer), and completed within a fixed deadline (e.g., 12 months).
  – This can be incentivized with price reductions for post-purchase compliance.
• Developing a legal framework for debt-to-asset swaps, allowing debtors to offer another asset to the bank in exchange for reclaiming ownership of their original home—with transparency and incentives for all parties.

A Unified Property Platform

All properties will be listed on a centralized online marketplace, showing detailed status updates, the current phase of maturity, and estimated completion timelines. The platform will include advanced search tools to enhance the user experience.

With these measures, the government and banks aim to significantly reduce the time it takes to utilize these properties, energize the real estate market, and ease housing price pressures.