The recovery om Greece’s housing market gained momentum over the last quarter of 2018, with prices rising 2.5% year-on-year, as shown by the latest data released by the Greek central bank.

Greek housing prices had declined by 42% since 2008’s peak data showed, suggesting that a recovering economy and growing interest might lift property prices further.

Apartment prices rose 2.5% in the fourth quarter compared with the same period in 2017, Bank of Greece data showed, with the recovery accelerating from a downwardly revised 2.1% increase in the third quarter of last year.

More specifically, prices rose by 4.2% year-on-year in Athens, where home-sharing platforms like Airbnb and a “golden visa” programme (a renewable five-year resident’s permit in return for a €250,000 investment in real estate) have grown very popular.            

Prices had slid 1.0% in 2017 from a year earlier, taking the cumulative fall since 2008, when the country’s protracted recession began, to 42%.

«It (new data) is a further confirmation of the uptrend in market prices, with Athens starring after an increase of 4.2%», National Bank economist Nikos Magginas told Reuters.

«It’s the result of rising demand and a shrinking stock of available-for-sale residential real estate», he added.

A projected rise in real disposable income of about 2% this year, coupled with improving economic sentiment and nascent signs of a pick-up in demand for mortgage credit, should further boost real estate prices in 2019, Magginas said.

Property accounts for a large chunk of household wealth in Greece, which has one of the highest home ownership rates in Europe at 80%, versus a European Union average of 70%, according to the European Mortgage Federation.

Original Story: Reuters | George Georgipoulos
Photo: FreeImages.com/Toomas Järvet
Edition:Prime Yield