Chartered surveyors to draw up property rates

Chartered surveyors are undertaking the difficult task of adjusting the property rates used for taxation purposes (known as “objective values”) for 2018.

According to an amendment tabled on Friday in Parliament, a one-off special process will be employed next year, with 13,000 zone values to be proposed to the finance minister by special surveyors who will be assigned to the project through a tender process. The new values will have to be delivered to the ministry by early March.

Still, the certified property surveyors of the ministry consider it improbable that the deadline will be met. A market professional poignantly said, “We will have to hire everyone who speaks Greek for assessments to be made in time.”

Thomas Ziogas, the president of the Greek branch of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS Hellas), told Kathimerini that due to the way the process has been structured, the quality of the assessments will not be safeguarded, given the absence of an entity with deep knowledge of the subject to observe the quality of the work produced. Practically, surveyors are being asked to assess zone values based on theoretical assumptions.