The bureaucracy that residential transfers entail, especially when it comes to the settlement of legal and technical pending matters, has become a critical part of the housing crisis.
The decision made in 2022 to oblige owners to issue an electronic ID for buildings as a required element of every transfer – purchase and sale, parental concession or inheritance – has revealed all kinds of illegalities, small and large, from 1955 to today.
Often the cost of the entire process is significant (several thousand euros), especially in cases of violations in properties built in the 1990s and 2000s, due to their higher taxable values.
Consequently, a significant investment of time and money is required from owners, often the reason why the attempt to develop housing is abandoned altogether.
The problem is highlighted in the recent research by the Center for Liberal Studies (KEFiM) on the housing crisis, because it is considered one of the reasons why the Greek housing market lacks sufficient supply, and therefore prices continue to rise sharply.
As noted in the research, “the average duration of completing a property transfer in Greece is 226 days (approximately 7.5 months), while in several cases it exceeds one year. The issuance of a building permit requires an average of 100 days.” In the categories of how much time it takes to transfer the property and how much time it takes to issue a project permit, “Greece receives the lowest possible score (in the World Bank’s annual report).”
For comparison purposes, a property transfer in Cyprus is completed in about a week, while in Spain it takes from one to three months.
In Germany it takes 1.5-3 months on average, and in France the time required does not exceed three months, putting Greece far behind other developed European economies.
Besides time, KEFiM says the cost of the process to navigate the necessary bureaucracy is also excessive.
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GR