The overwhelming response to a recent real estate advertisement in Iraklio, Crete, is indicative of the serious shortage of affordable housing in many parts of the country.
State broadcaster ERT on Thursday reported the case of a man in the Cretan city who advertised his 80 square meter apartment for a monthly rental rate of 400 euros on a popular realty website.
“It’s just a normal house. That’s a reasonable price for the property,” the man told ERT, adding that the building the apartment is located in is around 20 years old.
The rate he was asking appears to have been so attractive that he got the first call asking for a viewing just a couple of minutes after posting the listing and kept getting calls all through the night.
When he turned up at the property the next morning, there were as many as 70 people waiting in a line outside.
“The neighborhood thought we were having a funeral,” he told ERT, adding that some of the prospective renters offered him a whole years’ worth of rent in advance and others were prepared to shell out a bit more than the asking price just to secure the property.
He said the apartment was eventually let to a family of four that had spent the past few years living apart because they could not find an affordable house that was big enough to accommodate them all.
According to Eurostat, the average full-time annual salary in Greece came to €17,000 in 2023.