Lenders set to sell thousands of properties

Greek banks will need to rid themselves of up to 5,000 properties over the next few years in order to clear their portfolios of real estate assets accumulated through auctions and repossessions.

This offloading of the huge volume of properties that banks have forms an integral part of the plans for the reduction of bad loans that the lenders have submitted to the European Central Bank’s Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) for the next three years.

Sources say that the banks have given the monitoring authorities a plan for their gradual relief from this burden that provides for the sale of around 5,000 properties by end-2021.

Sector officials explain that holding on to those assets is not only incompatible with the banks’ objective, which is funding households and corporations, but that it also entails huge costs for their legal clearance, given that most of these assets have several legal issues pending. Their maintenance is also another major expense.

Those properties will be conceded through asset portfolios that the banks are preparing to put up for sale, as well as individually through special websites that banks intend to create.