Filling 750,000 empty houses

The government is seeking ways to return to the real estate market some 750,000 residential properties that are declared empty every year, in a bid to alleviate the acute housing problem that has been created in recent years and is rapidly heading toward a social crisis with incalculable consequences.

Already, in various cities abroad, disincentives like taxes and fees are being applied to keeping properties closed, with fairly encouraging results.

So far in Greece, subsidies for renovations is the preferred option as an incentive or benefit. Such schemes, however, are often dysfunctional, require a lot of time to implement and ultimately end up not having a meaningful impact on the market.

In the interim, those people who don’t have the luxury of owning property or happen to work in a different city than where they are from, are faced with exploding rental rates, which are rising far faster than salary hikes.

According to data compiled by the Eteron Institute for Research and Social Change, Greece has one of the highest rates of vacant housing in Europe, with large concentrations in urban centers. Based on the 2011 census, the percentage of vacant houses in Athens was 31%, in Piraeus 28% and in Thessaloniki 28.2%.