Why more and more Swiss people are buying a holiday home in Greece

“Isn’t that great?” says Jürgen Seidel. The winter sun shines from a cloudless sky. From the terrace of their apartment, Seidel and his wife Edith look down on Voula beach. The view goes over the shimmering silver sea to the island of Aegina. The mountain ranges of the Peloponnese peninsula tower behind it. The thermometer shows 19 degrees. “We can’t get enough of this panorama,” says Edith Seidel.

The Seidels have bought a penthouse in Voula, a coastal suburb of Athens. The couple paid 760,000 euros for the 190 square meter three-bedroom apartment. The couple, both in their mid-sixties, want to spend most of the year in Greece in the future.

Not only the seniors from the German state of Hessen go to Hellas. The country attracts with 300 days of sunshine a year and mild winters. “The Greek real estate market is developing very dynamically,” reports Georg Petras, the Greek boss of real estate agent Engel + Völkers. “For us, 80 to 85 percent of luxury holiday home purchases are made by foreigners, and the majority of those come from German-speaking countries, ie Germany, Austria and Switzerland.”

According to the Greek Central Bank, foreign investment in Greek real estate increased by 61 percent to 788 million euros in the first half of 2022. Market observers expect that 1.7 billion euros will flow into the Greek property market from abroad this year. That would be a new record.

The increasing demand is also due to Corona: “After the pandemic, more people than ever are seeking the safety of their own holiday property,” explains German-Greek Georg Petras, born in Stuttgart. According to Petras, prices in Greece are still moderate compared to other Mediterranean destinations such as Spain and the South of France and therefore offer buyers good entry points for buying property.

“First of all, regions that are accessible all year round are requested,” reports Christian Seyrer, director of the Global Real Estate Service (GIS), which specializes in Greece. According to Seyrer, the most sought-after regions are the Peloponnese peninsula, southern Crete and the island of Lefkada in the Ionian Sea, which is connected to the mainland by a bridge.

“The prices there are much cheaper than in the Aegean hotspots such as Mykonos and Santorini,” says Seyrer. He sees bargains in the Peloponnese around the picturesque harbor town of Nafplio, in the south of Crete between Agia Galini and Agios Pavlos and on the south coast of Lefkada. “Here are buildings of acceptable quality for square meter prices of 1800 to 2400 euros,” reports Seyrer.

In addition to the traditional holiday regions and islands, the Athenian Riviera is increasingly becoming the focus of foreign prospects. The 50km coastline between Piraeus and Cape Sounion offers a variety of shopping and entertainment options in elegant suburbs such as Glyfada, Voula, Vouliagmeni and Varkiza. This also convinced the Seidels: “The proximity to the metropolis of Athens with its great cultural and culinary offer and the good medical care was decisive,” says Jürgen Seidel. (bzbasel.ch)