Home prices in Greece are some 25 percent below 2010 levels, despite strong gains in recent years, as the market has yet to gain the ground lost during the country’s ten year economic crisis, according to data from Eurostat.
Housing prices tumbled some 40 percent in the country’s debt crisis that started in 2010 and nearly landed the country out of the euro amidst soaring unemployment levels and years of steep recession. Since 2018, however, house prices in Greece have started to recover.
Greek home prices cheap
Data shows that home prices gained 1.8 percent in 2018, 7 percent in 2019 and 5.8 percent in 2020.
In the first three months of 2021 prices gained 3.5 percent, followed by another spike of 4.6 percent in the second quarter on the back of a fast recovering economy and renewed buying interest from foreign investors. The upward trend is seen continuing for the remainder of this year, and next due, experts say.
Elsewhere in Europe, however, figures show that property price gains have been steeper in the last few years, raising concerns of price bubbles emerging in some markets.
Eurostat data telling
Eurostat data shows that the largest gains in the last ten years have been in Estonia where prices soared more than 130 percent since 2010, followed by gains of some 110 percent in Luxembourg and Hungary.
In Europe’s south, other markets have also yet to regain 2010 levels as Italy and Spain were also hit hard by Europe’s debt crisis, while Cyprus suffered its own banking crisis in 2013.
Housing prices in Spain and Italy are still off between 8 to 12 percent for the decade, while in Cyprus they are down some 7 percent.
When it comes to rent prices in Italy and Spain though, there have been net gains since 2010 but they remain in the single digits.