Greek home sales face unprecedented delays

By Nikos Rousanoglou

The process of selling a house in Greece has started to look like an odyssey, after the developments of the last few weeks.

The effort made, with specific legislative and regulatory interventions, to reduce the time required and the paperwork that accompanies every act of buying and selling real estate, has caused notaries to refrain from their duties, stifling activity in the real estate market at the worst possible time.

Traditionally, the last month of the year is also the most dynamic when it comes to the completion of purchase and sale contracts, essentially constituting the escalation of many months of efforts by sellers and buyers, in order to gather the dozens of required documents that accompany each transaction.

The president of the Association of Realtors of Athens-Attica, Lefteris Potamianos, commented that notaries refraining from their duties in property sales can have disastrous results for many sellers.

He explains: “There are people who, if they don’t transfer their property, may have it seized by a fund, because the payment deadlines will not have been met. There are also people who sell because they have to cover medical expenses or other serious issues (debt etc).”

As he adds, “in addition to the above, we are in a period before the holidays when traditionally most contracts are signed and expenses, salaries and other obligations must be paid by the companies involved.”

That is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the tortuous process of selling a home. As explained by Stratos Paradias, president of the Hellenic Property Federation (POMIDA), “today there are seven different documents which must show the same area. These are the TAP (Real Estate Fee) non-debt certificate, the title deed, the deed of establishment of horizontal ownership, the floor plan of the building, the building’s electronic identity, the cadastral extract and the ENFIA non-debt certificate.” If any of these shows a different area, the seller has to start a “marathon” of corrections.