Attica assets attract buyers from abroad

Almost 70 percent of the residence permits issued to date through the Golden Visa program have resulted from investments in the region of Attica, while foreign investment in the local property market is soaring.

Data presented on Wednesday at the Prodexpo property conference in Athens showed that 26.52 percent of the assets acquired to satisfy the requirements of the program for the issue of permits to non-European Union citizens are in Piraeus, 21.26 percent are in Athens and 20.8 percent in Eastern Attica.

The figures presented by Constantinos Angelopoulos of Enterprise Greece revealed that foreign direct investments in Greek properties and tourism amounted to 765 million euros in 2016, while annual growth this year, according to the latest available data from the Bank of Greece, is close to 160 percent.

Dimitris Melachroinos, co-founder of the Spitogatos website, which hosts property ads, showed statistics from his site that put demand for Greek properties from China to have risen by 203 percent this year, followed by Turkey (up 90 percent), Germany (68 percent) and the United Arab Emirates (50 percent).