🇬🇷Greece · Property
Greece — Property
What it costs to buy property in Greece in 2026: transfer tax, Golden Visa thresholds €250,000 to €800,000, ENFIA, capital gains, and the Athens Airbnb freeze.
Greece’s own migration ministry still publishes an English page built on a repealed law, quoting a flat € 250,000 where the statute now demands up to € 800,000. So what does a Greek purchase really cost to close, what residency does it buy, and what may you legally do with the flat afterwards?
Buying in Greece: a real price trend, an uncertain closing cost
Greek apartment prices rose 5.7 % year on year in the first quarter of 2026. The figure is Bank of Greece provisional data that did not come from the Bank: bankofgreece.gr refused seven different requests while this chapter was researched, and the number reached the page through GTP Headlines, a Greek trade outlet. That is a central-bank series read through a media proxy. Worth having, and not the same thing.
Prices are the easy half. What a purchase costs to close is harder, and the obstacle is access rather than complexity. , which publishes the zone tables, returns an error to visitors from outside Greece. The Ministry of Justice page listing notarial tariffs could not be resolved by DNS. A buyer researching in English gets pushed toward estate-agency marketing for numbers that ought to sit in a statute.
Most percentages in the next section come from one Athens brokerage, Terra Property, whose buyer guide argues with itself: one block says 7 to 9 % of the price, another says 7 to 11 %. Take the wider band. Budget roughly 7 to 11 % on top of the price for or VAT, the notary, the registry or , and the optional lawyer and agent. Test any tighter number you are quoted: exactly one line in that stack is written in a law you can read.
What it actually costs to close: tax, VAT, and fee scales nobody can verify
Start with the line that comes from a law rather than a listing. The charges 3 % of taxable value on a transfer, under article 27 §1. Article 27 §5 then adds a further 3 % for the municipalities, levied on the tax itself and not on the value, which is where the effective 3.09 % comes from. The taxes chapter quotes the bare statutory 3 %; both are the same tax, with and without the municipal top-up.
Article 27 also cuts the rate: to a quarter for divisions among co-owners and for transfers on a company’s dissolution, to a half for compulsory exchanges of adjacent plots, mergers, expropriation and equal-value swaps. None describes an ordinary purchase.
The base is not simply what you agreed to pay. Article 25 §1 charges the tax on whichever is greater: the consideration in the notarial deed, or the assessed value the Ministry of Finance sets for that location, size and age. Under-declaring shrinks nothing when the assessed floor sits higher. Those zone tables are published only by AADE, so no euro figure for a street appears here.
New builds are the exception, and it keeps being rolled forward. VAT on newly built property is suspended through December 2026 under Law 5246/2025, which covered both fresh applications and suspensions already running. Where it applies, the buyer pays transfer tax instead; PwC’s live Greece pages still carry the older end date.
Now the part with no statute behind it. Terra Property publishes the notary tariff as a sliding scale. Sliding scale: up to €120,000 → 0.80%; €120,000-380,000 → 0.70%; €380,000-2,000,000 → 0.65%; above €2,000,000 → down to 0.10% (further negotiable above €20,000,000). Plus per-page fees and 24% VAT on the fee. Registration costs 0.475 % of taxable value plus VAT at a Land Registry, or a flat 0.5 % without VAT at the National Cadastre replacing it. Agent commission is unregulated: the norm is 2 % plus VAT from each side, though some bill the seller alone at 3 to 4 %.
A lawyer is optional. Statutory minimum legal fees went in January 2014, and customary rates now run near 1 % on smaller purchases, about half that on larger ones. None of these percentages is a government schedule; they are one brokerage’s published guide, and the schedule that would settle the question sits behind a domain that does not resolve.
- Transfer tax (ΦΜΑ)3% of the taxable value under Property Tax Code art.27 §1, plus a 3% municipal charge on the tax itself under §5
- 3.09 %verif. · 2026-08-17
- Notary feesliding scale from 0.80% down to 0.10%, Terra Property
- Sliding scale: up to €120,000 → 0.80%; €120,000-380,000 → 0.70%; €380,000-2,000,000 → 0.65%; above €2,000,000 → down to 0.10% (further negotiable above €20,000,000). Plus per-page fees and 24% VAT on the fee.verif. · 2026-08-17
- Land registry / cadastre0.475%-0.5%, Terra Property
- Transfer registration fee: 0.475% of the taxable value plus 24% VAT if registered at a Land Registry (Υποθηκοφυλακείο); 0.5%, no VAT, if registered at the National Cadastre (Κτηματολόγιο), which is gradually replacing the Land Registry nationwide.verif. · 2026-08-17
- Agent commissionunregulated, ~2% each side, Terra Property
- Unregulated and freely negotiable. Market norm: 2% + 24% VAT from EACH side (buyer and seller); some agencies charge the seller only, at 3-4%.verif. · 2026-08-17
- All-in rule of thumbthe source page is internally inconsistent; take the wider range
- Budget approximately 7-11% of the property price on top of the price for transfer tax/VAT, notary, registry/cadastre, and optional lawyer and agent fees.verif. · 2026-08-17
One relief exists, and most readers here will miss it. A first home is exempt from transfer tax up to €200,000 for a single buyer and €250,000 for a married couple, with uplifts per child and for severe disability. The catch is the test: the property has to become the buyer’s actual primary residence, which excludes most purchases arranged from abroad. An investor buying at € 800,000 in Attica pays in full, every time.
Owning: the ENFIA relief that actually exists, and the rental-income scale
A 30 % discount for primary residences circulates widely, including in this product’s own data file, which is being corrected. Nothing opened for this chapter supports it: not PwC, not the Finance Ministry’s text for Law 5246/2025. Two reductions are confirmed, and neither is that one.
The first is insurance-linked, from Law 5162/2024 and in force since 2025. Insure your main home for the whole preceding year and ENFIA on it falls by 20 % where the taxable value is €500,000 or less, by 10 % above that. Cover must run three months minimum, and is pro-rated for a part year.
The second is new, and worth checking a map for. From tax year 2026, ENFIA on the main residence of a Greek tax resident in a settlement of 1,500 people or fewer is halved, provided the taxable value stays at or under €400,000. The limit rises to 1,700 in the Region of Western Macedonia, the Regional Unit of Evros, and border-adjacent municipalities of Central Macedonia, Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, and Epirus. From 2027 that category pays nothing.
Attica is excluded, with one exception: the Regional Unit of Islands is not. An Aegean island main residence can qualify while a mainland Attica village of the same size cannot. Main-residence status is read off last year’s tax return, so the claim rests on how you filed.
Selling looks generous and is only postponed. The Income Tax Code taxes gains on transferring immovable property at 15 % under article 41, and article 41 is suspended through December 2026. Read the scope closely: the suspension covers immovable property and nothing else. Gains on shares sit under different articles.
Rent is taxed on its own scale, never stacked on employment or pension income. Law 5246/2025 rewrote it for 2026. €0-12,000: 15%; €12,000-24,000: 25%; €24,000-36,000: 35%; above €36,000: 45%. The change bites in the middle, where the old scale ran one flat band across what are now two.
Alongside it sits a lever aimed at short-let stock. Rental income from a home of up to 120 sqm, let on a contract of three years or more signed between September 2024 and the end of 2026, is exempt from income tax for 36 months, provided the property was previously empty or exclusively short-let and no short-term-rental filing is made in that time. Greece is paying owners out of the short-stay market, the other half of a story that starts in central Athens.
Golden Visa by property: three zones, and the ministry page that still shows the old number
Greece’s Ministry of Migration and Asylum publishes an English Golden Visa page. In August 2026 it still describes the regime repealed in 2024, under article 20B of Law 4251/2014, and quotes a flat threshold of € 250,000. No zoned structure, no 120 sqm minimum. A reader who trusts the ministry’s own page and buys in Athens is out by more than three times.
The live rule is article 100 of , as amended in 2024. In Attica, the Regional Unit of Thessaloniki, the Regional Units of Mykonos and Santorini, and islands of more than 3,100 people, the threshold is € 800,000. Everywhere else it is € 400,000. One property, at least 120 sqm if built.
The Thessaloniki boundary catches people. The statute says Regional Unit, not Municipality, and it reaches well past the city limits, so a suburb that feels safely outside Thessaloniki can still sit in the higher band.
- Attica, Thessaloniki region, Mykonos, Santorini, islands >3,100 pop.800,000 €
- Rest of Greece400,000 €
- Conversion / vacant industrial / listed-building restoration250,000 €
The € 250,000 floor survives on three narrow routes, not as a general discount: changing a non-residential building’s use to residential, buying an industrial building vacant of industrial use for five years or more, or restoring a listed building. On that last route the statute voids any transfer made before the works finish.
Which value counts is worth settling before you negotiate. On the ordinary purchase routes the test is what you actually paid, not the assessed value that governs transfer tax. Assessed value returns only on the separate route qualifying through inheritance or a parental gift, at the same zone threshold. Two bases, and conflating them is how a file fails its own test.
Then read what the permit withholds. Article 100 §9 grants no right of access to any form of employment: the holder may live in Greece and may not work in it. Paragraph 7A bars short-term letting of the qualifying property through sharing-economy platforms, and bars sub-leasing outright; a breach revokes the permit and carries a separate €50,000 fine. Ordinary long-term leasing stays expressly allowed under §7.
One restriction sits outside the visa question. Non-EU and non-EFTA nationals and companies cannot acquire ownership or a lien over property in designated border areas without prior permission, and a procedure exists to lift the prohibition. Near military installations it is tighter still. Which areas are designated is a question for the notary; no list appears here, because none could be verified.
Buying to let short-term: the Athens freeze and what it means for a resale
Every short-let property needs a number before it needs a guest. AADE runs a Short-Term Rental Property Registry that issues an registration number, and it must appear in every listing on every platform, Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo alike. The legal basis is article 111 §2A of Law 4446/2016. AADE’s own portal could not be opened for this chapter.
In central Athens the registry stopped issuing them. First-time registrations are suspended from the start of 2025 to the end of 2026 across the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Municipal Districts of the Municipality of Athens, under a December 2025 decision reproduced verbatim by the tax outlet Taxheaven. This page names no neighbourhoods: the district mapping in circulation could not be checked against an official boundary.
Enforcement is priced to be noticed. A first violation costs half the income earned from the property since the start of 2025, floor €20,000. A repeat inside the same tax year costs all the rent collected since the previous check, floor €40,000. AADE collects.
From March 2026 the same policy reached parts of Thessaloniki, its first move beyond Athens. Which makes the next point matter more than it looks: an AMA does not travel with the property. In a saturated zone a change of ownership deletes the registration rather than transferring it, and the buyer cannot obtain a fresh one while the freeze holds.
So a listing advertising a running Airbnb flat in central Athens sells an income stream the buyer cannot legally inherit. Price it as a long-term rental, or as a home, and read the short-let history as decoration.
Coastline rules, and what a "rental yield in Greece" figure actually is
Some restrictions apply to everyone, whatever the passport. A property offered for sale must not sit on the seashore or coastal zone, on a biotope, on public land, or on an archaeological site, under Law 2242/1994. A separate rule from 1951 keeps a safety zone of 200 metres around a lighthouse, inside which a transfer is not permitted. These are standard checks a Greek notary runs before the deed, and they are why a cheap coastal plot deserves a second look.
Yield is where the sourcing thins, and not through laziness. Neither nor the Bank of Greece publishes a rental-yield statistic or a standalone rent level. That is a confirmed absence, not a page that refused to open, so every yield percentage written about Greece is somebody’s own division of asking rent by asking price.
One such snapshot comes from Investropa, a property-content site, dated May 2026 and drawn from its own tracked listings. Kipseli (Athens) 1-bed: ~€99,000 purchase / ~€600/mo rent / 7.27% gross / ~5.57% net. Athens Center 1-bed: 6.05% gross / 4.15% net. Voulgari (Thessaloniki) 1-bed: 6.00% gross / 4.30% net. Read it as one site’s arithmetic, not Greece’s yield, and note that the Athens rows describe a market whose short-let exit is shut.
Settle the value question before the price question. Decide whether the flat is a home, a long-term rental or a residency instrument: each answers to a different rule above. Then walk the closing sequence in order: open the Greece checklist, or return to the Greece overview.
Frequently asked
Can foreigners buy property in Greece?
EU and EEA nationals buy on the same terms as Greeks. Non-EU nationals and companies can generally buy too, with one gate: property in designated border areas needs prior permission before ownership or a lien can be acquired, and a procedure exists to lift the prohibition. Rules tighten near military installations, and which areas are designated is a question for the notary.
How much does it cost to buy property in Greece?
Budget roughly 7 to 11 % of the price on top of the price. Transfer tax is the anchor at 3.09 %: 3 % of taxable value by statute, plus a 3 % municipal charge levied on that tax rather than on the value. Notary, registry and agent fees make up the rest, and those come from an Athens brokerage’s guide, not a government schedule.
How much do I need to invest for a Greek Golden Visa in 2026?
€ 800,000 in Attica, the Regional Unit of Thessaloniki, Mykonos, Santorini and islands over 3,100 people; € 400,000 everywhere else. A € 250,000 floor survives on three narrow routes only: change of use, a long-vacant industrial building, or restoring a listed one. One property, at least 120 sqm if built. The ministry’s own English page still shows the repealed flat figure.
Can I put my Greek property on Airbnb?
Only with an AMA number from AADE’s short-term rental registry, quoted in every listing on every platform. New registrations are frozen across the 1st to 3rd Municipal Districts of Athens until the end of 2026, and in parts of Thessaloniki from March 2026. A Golden Visa property can never be short-let: that revokes the permit and draws a €50,000 fine.
Do I pay property tax every year in Greece?
Yes, ENFIA, billed annually. Two reductions on a main residence are confirmed: 20 % if the home is insured and its taxable value is €500,000 or less, 10 % above that; and a small-settlement relief worth half the bill in 2026, becoming a full exemption from 2027, capped at €400,000 and excluding Attica bar its island Regional Unit. The widely quoted 30 % discount is corroborated by nothing here.
Is there capital gains tax when I sell property in Greece?
On paper yes, at 15 % under article 41 of the Income Tax Code. In practice article 41 is suspended through December 2026, and it has been rolled forward repeatedly rather than repealed, so treat the zero as temporary. The suspension covers immovable property only; gains on shares sit under different articles.
Verified · 2026-08-17