Still, average Athens price in downtown Athens is €1,800 per sqm.
Lisbon is over €5,000, Paris over €10,000-- Tel Aviv also around €10,000.
Also, sure Athens prices may be back to 2007 levels (barely), but unless I'm mistaken the index is nominal, and CPI is up ~26%, so in real terms they're down by about that much. Also as other have mentioned very little construction in the past 10 years means constrained supply.
All of which goes to say I'd be very long Greek RE and Athens in particular.
Great piece! I've been thinking about the housing price boom myself for some time now. Possible reasons: short-stay and Golden Visa (as mentioned in the article) plus (close to) zero supply in the last many years (i.e. no new houses) and the grey economy coming back with a vengeance, 'replacing' mortgage lending as a funding source. It's a crazy housing market out there.
Thanks Dimitri! Yes, the situation is getting a bit nuts. I hadn't considered the grey economy aspect to it. Anecdotally, people were saying years ago that the housing market felt like a bubble, and that seemed a bit premature then given how far the index was from its peak. But it's not very far off now. There's certainly a crazy large amount of construction of new housing going on where I live, in Cholargos, but it's not necessarily a very representative neighbourhood. And also, much of the new construction now is making up from the backlog of a decade of not very much new stuff going up.
Still, average Athens price in downtown Athens is €1,800 per sqm.
Lisbon is over €5,000, Paris over €10,000-- Tel Aviv also around €10,000.
Also, sure Athens prices may be back to 2007 levels (barely), but unless I'm mistaken the index is nominal, and CPI is up ~26%, so in real terms they're down by about that much. Also as other have mentioned very little construction in the past 10 years means constrained supply.
All of which goes to say I'd be very long Greek RE and Athens in particular.
Great piece! I've been thinking about the housing price boom myself for some time now. Possible reasons: short-stay and Golden Visa (as mentioned in the article) plus (close to) zero supply in the last many years (i.e. no new houses) and the grey economy coming back with a vengeance, 'replacing' mortgage lending as a funding source. It's a crazy housing market out there.
Thanks Dimitri! Yes, the situation is getting a bit nuts. I hadn't considered the grey economy aspect to it. Anecdotally, people were saying years ago that the housing market felt like a bubble, and that seemed a bit premature then given how far the index was from its peak. But it's not very far off now. There's certainly a crazy large amount of construction of new housing going on where I live, in Cholargos, but it's not necessarily a very representative neighbourhood. And also, much of the new construction now is making up from the backlog of a decade of not very much new stuff going up.