It’s not just the high values of real estatebut also the memories of the crisis that prevent borrowers from getting a mortgage loan, as the analysis finds out in its analysis Eurobank Research.
As Eurobank Research points out, it is a global paradox in Greece to have a dramatic recovery of the real estate market, while not having a significant increase in housing, as the overwhelming majority of real estate markets are done without banking, with other home -based deposits.
In housing faith, Greece ranks the last position among the eurozone member states (EZ20) in lending proportionally to its GDP (only 11% of GDP against a median price of 31% for EZ20), while net credit expansion (new mortgages) are still in 2010. Missed customers to grant it in order to support their profitability in a decreasing interest rate environment.
As Eurobank Research points out, since 2003, the first year for which data is available from the Bank of Greece until 2009, the year in which the crisis began to unfold, a total of 78.6 billion euros of mortgages were disbursed (annual average: $ 11.2 billion). From 2010 to 2024, disbursements of new mortgages did not exceed € 30.5 billion, ie about 2 billion per year. From 2015 to 2020, the annual flow was less than $ 1 billion, and despite the significant increase in the postporte period (+129% between 2019 and 2024), just over 1.4 billion in 2024. It remains 83% lower than the average flow in the period before the budgetary crisis.
As Eurobank Research says, the international crisis has made the criteria for housing loans. For most of the 2000s, the bank’s loyalty criteria were, internationally, significantly more relaxed than it is today, while the grid of regulatory rules was fragmented. With the outbreak of the global financial crisis in the second half of 2008, the criteria of Greek banks began to become more conservative and further tightened with the fiscal crisis in early 2010, following the restructuring of public debt at the end of 2012 and in 2012. This was also the imposition of a stricter supervisory framework for the banking system worldwide with the gradual application of the rules of the Basel III third pact (Basel III), even more at a pan -European level with the establishment of the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM). The terms of housing loans remain prudent in order to avoid the side effects of the relaxed criteria of the pre -crisis period.
In addition, households continue to show sluggish demand for a mortgage loan, despite the decline in interest rates. As Eurobank Research points out, the memory of the crisis period, the launch of non -performing debt at an incomprehensible level and their consequences may discourage households that would potentially meet these criteria from applying for a loan.
But there are also structural causes for the “swamp” of housing faith.
- The decrease in housing prices (in 2024 was the 7th year in the series rising price of apartments, cumulative +70.1%), as well as the inflationary wave of the energy crisis period (in the 5 years 2020–2024 the total increase in food prices exceeds 30%).
- Inadequate supply of residential real estate and demand from abroad are likely to have a greater effect on the most affordable properties preferred by households that would have a torque on housing loans.
- Factors such as the often time -consuming procedures required to transfer a property, especially in the case of the use of state subsidy programs (“My Home I and II”), push some property owners to prefer buyers who do not use a mortgage loan.