Objective values to raise prices in 2,000 areas

The Finance Ministry is planning to include an additional 2,000 districts across the country in the system of taxable property rates known as objective values.

Sources say that the whole of Greece will have been included in the system by the end of the first quarter of 2020, which means a total of some 7,500 districts will be incorporated.

As one ministry official tells Kathimerini, the provisional work for the 2,000 areas to enter the objective value system – determining the tax value of each property – has already started. By the end of June the ministry’s agencies are expected to have determined the objective values for those districts, possibly with the assistance of chartered surveyors.

According to major notary firms and estate agencies, that development will lead to prices soaring by some 80-90 percent in those areas, as well as to a sharp rise in the taxes that property owners or buyers will need to pay. This is because the calculation of the properties’ value have been made to date through comparisons with neighboring areas, with tax officials having the final word, while tens of thousands of owners have gone to court to dispute the tax officers’ estimates and many transactions have gone through unofficial channels.