The Greeks are Europe’s champions in housing costs – What does a survey by the Bank of Greece show

The reality experienced by Greeks regarding the cost of housing comes to confirm the Bank of Greece. As can be seen from Financial Stability Report we are its “champions”. EU since the percentage of income we spend on housing is the highest and reached 34.2% in 2022 (followed by Netherlandsthe Denmark and the Germany), when the rest of Europe spends an average of 19.9%.

Another negative first is that of the excessive burden due to housing costs. In 2022 27% of the country’s population shouldered housing costs which accounted for a percentage of more than 40% of his disposable income, when the corresponding percentage of the population in the euro area was 9.4%.

Regarding the property pricesthe Bank of Greece estimates that there is room for further growth despite their significant increase in recent years. And this is because housing prices in Greece are still far from the historic high recorded before the financial crisis of 2008. The highest value of the index was observed in the year 2008 (101.7) and then followed a steady downward path, to be recorded the lowest price in 2017 (59). The evolution of the level of rents is similar, with the relative index being 98.5 based on the data of the third quarter of 2023, against 94.8 in the fourth quarter of 2022. The rent index, in contrast to house price index, remains significantly lower than the highest value it has received historically (124.3 in the 3rd quarter of 2011).

In the second quarter of 2023, the prices of new apartments (up to 5 years old) increased at an average annual rate of 13.8%, while the prices of old apartments increased by 14.1%.

The increases in the urban centers are of course greater, since in Thessaloniki (16.4%) and in other large cities (14.6%) the annual growth rate of apartment prices exceeded the corresponding average growth rate for the whole country.

Despite the continued increase in prices, the increase in demand for housing loans. According to the figures of the Central Bank, the disbursements of loans secured by residential properties amounted to 507.8 million euros in the first half of 2023, increased by 1.8% compared to the corresponding period last year and remain low both in absolute terms and in compared to the level before the global crisis. The loan disbursements secured residential properties amounted to 241.5 million euros, reduced by 10.7% compared to the second quarter of 2022, and 3,097 new loan contracts were signed. This year’s second quarter average loan disbursement amounted to 78 thousand euros. euro. It should be noted that the market share of the four major credit institutions in terms of loan disbursements secured by residential properties amounted to 91.5%.

With information from APE-MPE