The housing crisis is raging, especially in large urban centers, where homeownership rates are lower than the already declining average, leading rental rates ever higher.
Eurostat data show that from 2005 to 2023, the homeownership rate fell from 84.6% to just 69.6%. This has dramatically increased the number of prospective tenants, while this pool is constantly being enriched by the inability of most new households to turn to the housing market.
Rents are constantly increasing, supply remains limited, while salaries and households’ purchasing power has not recovered at the desired rate. The latest annual report by the General Confederation of Greek Labor (GSEE) is revealing, noting that Greece is the country with the highest housing costs in the EU as a percentage of income. According to Eurostat, Greeks pay an average of 35.2% of their disposable income on housing costs, when the average in the EU is 19.7%.
Meanwhile, the cost of housing continues its upward trend. According to data from the online ads platform Spitogatos, during the six-year period 2019-2024 and despite the intervention of the pandemic, which halted rent hikes for approximately 18 months, increases of up to 49% are recorded (in the eastern suburbs of Attica).
In the center of Athens, the increase in the average asking rental price is 16.8%, a percentage that does not seem large, but this is due to the fact that large increases have already taken place since the two-year period 2017-2018. Even so, around 1,000 euros is now required to rent a 100-110-square meter apartment in the city center or around €700-800 for an 80 sq.m. residence.
Large increases are also recorded in the western suburbs, amounting to 38%, from €6/sq.m. to €8.37/sq.m, while in the northern suburbs the increase for the period 2019-2024 was 33.2%, from €8.33/sq.m. to €11.1/sq.m.
Besides demand, a key factor behind the rise in rents is the reverse course that supply has followed in recent years. Based on the latest census of 2021, ELSTAT records 793,000 closed residences nationwide.