House price decline set to continue

The Bank of Greece has forecast in its monetary policy report that the residential property market will continue to decline over the next few quarters, as both prices and demand will keep dropping, albeit at a slower pace than recently.

From the beginning of 2015 to the end of the first quarter of this year, residential property prices in Greece fell 5 percent on average, against 7.4 percent in 2014.

In total, house prices shrank 41.3 percent from 2008 – when the recession began – up to the end of March 2016, reaching up to 43.5 percent in Athens and 45.2 percent in Thessaloniki.