IMF sees rise in Athens property rates
International Monetary Fund data are showing an impressive annual growth rate of 5 percent in Athens property prices from 2013 to 2017, though rates in the rest of the country slid by 5 percent every year over that period.
The figures show that Greece is the only country monitored by the IMF to see such a disparity in rates between the capital and the rest of its regions. The same disparity, meanwhile, also appears in the latest report by the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund (HFSF) that also tracks these differences.
Athens ranked in 13th place in terms of rising property prices among 44 cities in 40 countries covered by the IMF survey, at a time when Greece was in a recessionary cycle, particularly in the period from 2015 to 2016.
The IMF data for Athens appear hard to explain, as they run counter to figures from the Bank of Greece and from a large number of surveys by international and domestic property service companies who often accuse the BoG of understating the price decline.
