Foreign Investors Re-interested in Greek Market

A pan-European survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Urban Land Institute (ULI) showed that hotels still remain the Number 1 choice for foreign investors who are active in the local property market. Based on the survey’s results, property market professionals stated that Greece’s capital rose from 27th spot in the previous survey to 13th among European destinations for property investment, a fact that reflects the growth in investor interest within twelve months only. Although last year the real estate market in Athens was a “forbidden” area for investors, today this idea has changed and many people support that the Greek capital is able to offer great investment opportunities. “The recovery success of Ireland and now Spain too, has given a number of investors the outlook that something similar will happen in the other Southern European countries hurt by the crisis,” stated Giorgos Kambouropoulos, head of the Greek branch of the ULI. According to him, foreign investors are mostly interested in hotels considering that tourism is the main attraction. Nonetheless, Mr. Kambouropoulos claimed that the investors are currently interested in the Greek market mostly for opportunistic reasons. “They buy only when the price is extremely low, usually 40 percent below the already low value of each property. Their aim is to reduce the investment risk they take by entering the Greek market. This is why they seek out distressed sales which offer high yield duo to the low price paid,” he highlighted in his statement to Kathimerini. As chief executive at property management firm Pangaia, Aristotelis Karytinos, said, “foreigners prefer to buy hotel units from banks but there are no such packages on the market nowadays, so they are turning their attention to isolated hotel unit sales by owners. Their top choices are Mykonos, Santorini, Crete and Rhodes.”

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