The jump in apartment prices

“Residential property prices around the world are rising despite the ongoing pandemic,” experts say.

The conclusion of a study by the international real estate company Knight Frank on the housing market in 2021 confirms the latest data from the Bank of Greece for the third quarter of this year, which fix an annual increase in apartment prices by 7.9% throughout the country.

Athens, the city with the most expensive apartments, showed a 9.8% rise in prices in the third quarter. This is followed by Thessaloniki with 8.7%, other large cities with 5.9% and the country’s regions with 5.7%.

Throughout the year, apartment prices rose, amounting to 4.3% in the first quarter and 6.2% in the second, according to revised data. In 2020, despite the freezing of the economy, prices rose by an average of 4.5%.

An interesting conclusion: in the last quarter, old apartments were more expensive than newly built ones (8.2% versus 7.6%). This is the opposite trend, according to which new apartments under 5 years old were more expensive in 2020 and in the first quarter of 2021 compared to old ones, while in the second quarter of 2021 the cost of old and new apartments increased by an equal rate of 6.2%.

Athens

The corresponding index is growing steadily throughout 2021, after a slight slowdown in price growth in the second half of 2020 amid the first wave of the pandemic. The approximate price index for apartments in Athens in the third quarter of 2021 is 76.2 (100 – 2007 prices), while before the pandemic it was 63.9.

The rise in apartment prices in Thessaloniki has been at a slower pace, while a large increase has occurred since mid-2021. The pandemic crisis has negatively impacted prices in other major cities and other parts of Greece, even recording price declines in the last quarter of 2020, a trend that will gradually reverse in 2021.

Greece appears to be following the global trend of rising house prices, a market that, according to the Financial Times, “is on fire due to low interest rates and a housing shortage.” At the same time, residential real estate worldwide is rising in price by 9.2% in 2021 (according to data from 55 countries), the highest growth rate since 2005.

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