Greek Residential Property Remains Popular, Despite Country's Economic Crisis

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(MOSCOW, RUSSIA) -- The recent economic crisis and turmoil in Greece (a bomb just went off in front of JP Morgan Chase office building today), has not resulted in a sharp decline in local housing prices despite to some analysts' expectations, suggests a new study carried out by the experts of the Russian Information Agency Vesti-FM.

According to their data, current prices for residential real estate in Greece start from 50 thousand euros for small apartments reaching up to 1 million euros for villas, located on the coast.

Experts say that the crisis has not significantly affected prices for the Greek residential real estate, which declined by only 5%. However usually the final value of the acquired property is 10-15% higher than claimed by the seller.

Today the acquisition of Greek real estate by foreigners may be associated with certain problems due to strict local legislation regulating the procedure of acquiring real estate by citizens from the countries outside the EU.

Also a problem, Greece has a relatively high real estate transfer tax, ranging from 9% to 11% of the cadastral value, as well as infrequent cases of construction of housing in violation of the cadastral map.

Yet today the Greek authorities are actively promoting domestic real estate among foreigners by providing them with the long-term loans (up to 35 years) at low interest rates.

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