Buyers opt for houses over 20 years old
The Greek housing market seems to prefer older properties, over 20 years old, which are also more affordable in terms of sale prices.
According to the data of the latest annual survey carried out by the network of 85 real estate offices of RE/MAX Greece, 70% of buyers last year chose properties that were built more than 20 years ago.
Another reason that draws interested parties to these properties is that they can be resold at a higher price if they are renovated and given an energy upgrade.
Of course, the preference for older properties is unsurprising given that the availability of more modern properties is particularly limited in relation to the total stock. There have been very few new housing developments over the last 15 years and even fewer of them are available for sale today. Therefore, the vast majority of available properties are older.
According to RE/MAX’s nationwide analysis, homes over 20 years old were preferred by 69.5% of buyers in 2023, while 15.5% of total sales involved newly built properties up to five years old. The intermediate age categories of properties, i.e. from 16 to 20 years, gathered the interest of only 0.6% of buyers. From 11 to 15 years the percentage of final buyers reached 13.2% and from six to 10 years only to 1.2%.
In Attica, about 82.7% of the properties sold belonged to the category of old houses, over 20 years old. On the contrary, newly built and properties up to five years old made up only 4% of the total sales, down from 6% in 2022. In Thessaloniki, a similar trend is observed as in Attica: The highest rates of preference are found in properties over 20 years old, reaching 79.5%. On the contrary, newly built properties up to five years old are moving at lower levels than in 2022, covering 5.6% of total sales – a decrease of 2 percentage points compared to 2022.
Finally, in the rest of Greece the percentage of buyers who chose properties over 20 years old amounts to 61.3%, clearly lower than Attica and Thessaloniki. It is noteworthy that newly built properties up to five years old occupy second place, as they were preferred at a rate of 23%.
Residential properties continue to be the most popular property category, with 83.7% of sales nationwide being homes. Purchases of land (12.8%) came in second.
