Real estate professionals anticipate further price growth this year, albeit at a more moderate pace, and also greater market maturity in 2025. However, structural issues persist, including long-standing delays in transactions. This is even though times have improved – relatively speaking – through the digitisation of a number of processes in conveyancing.

“We are seeing a qualitative improvement in the transaction environment where, in the past, to complete, for example, a title check was actually a very laborious process. There have now been many, even small steps forward in this area; there is indeed an improvement in the digitisation part, and the possibilities that are opening up are indeed reformative,” said Mr. George Rekas, lawyer and Head of Legal Services at Sioufas and Partners Law Firm.

As mentioned yesterday, instead of the average of 120- 150 days needed in the past for transfers, now this time has been reduced to 60- 90 days, which is still a lot, but “a relative improvement”.

The two big challenges

“The Greek market continues to show resilience, but as this previous momentum moves to a more moderate pace, the structural imbalance and the emergence of specific characteristics related to the gap between property values and the real capabilities of households is becoming apparent,” said, for his part, Lefteris Potamianos, president of the Panhellenic Federation of Real Estate Agents of Greece. “When the middle class is facing an issue and the real estate market relies heavily on exogenous demand, then there is an issue of lack of resilience and depth of the market, which becomes, under these circumstances, more vulnerable. And this is where we see the lack of consultation with the State, which changes measures, announces programmes (i.e., My House I, My House II, etc.) without consulting the market players, creating new distortions in the real estate market, wasting both time and money. The problem cannot be solved by policies designed in a vacuum,” he said, while highlighting two major problems currently facing the market: “The first has to do with property transfers. Firstly, it has to do with the first issue, which has to do with the digital transformation. The second problem is the inactive building stock, a huge dead capital waiting to be activated and a wealth that already exists and is not being exploited.”