A high percentage of houses in neighboring Greece are vacant. In practice, one in three buildings is uninhabitable, and the reasons for this are, on the one hand, the outdated and depreciated, due to uninhabitability, building stock, and on the other hand, the misunderstandings that arise between more than one heir to the house in question, according to an analysis by the real estate company Blupeak Estate Analytics.
In figures, this means that out of a total of 6.5 million properties in the segment in question, 2.2 million are uninhabitable, or 34%. For comparison, this is twice as much as a number of European Union member states, where the percentage in question is between 10% and 15%.
The regions in which the trend is most pronounced are Attica with 526,000 empty houses. In second and third place are Central Macedonia and Peloponnese, with 363,000 and 209,000, respectively. The TOP 5 also includes Western Greece - 155,000 uninhabited houses and Thessaly - 133,000.
It is important to note that the majority of properties are holiday homes. This is a huge untapped potential for development of the property market, especially for foreign investors who want their second home to be in a warm and sunny place, such as our southern neighbor. In practice, 5.7 million houses, or 87.5 of the properties, are over 30 years old.
„This is precisely the reason for the large number of empty homes – their high degree of depreciation. They are built according to old building regulations, lack good insulation, and there is no mention of high-class energy efficiency. The majority of owners consider it unprofitable to invest money in the renovation of the houses in question“, analysts from Blupeak Estate Analytics comment.
Detailed statistics on the average property prices in Bulgaria by cities and neighborhoods can be seen HERE