Buy property for sale in Greece

How to buy house or other property for sale in Greece step by step

1. Searching and finding a property: first of all, you have to find the property you desire to buy. There are 2 ways for doing that. The first one, is buy the local papers and read the adds. Of course, you'll have to be able to speak and read greek or you must have someone who will do it for you. The most common way for a foreigner is to get in touch with a greek real estate agent, speaking their language or at least english. The agent will show you around the available properties and make the necessary arrangements with the greek owner (who might not speak english). Of course, when the contract will be signed you'll have to pay a fee to the real estate agent. But, it will still cost you much less and you'll have saved yourself a lot of time and money. As there is no greek law defining the agent's fee, you should always ask real estate agents which is their fee and if it's included in the buying price. 2. Deposit: when you find the right property and you decide to buy it, you should give a deposit to the owner in order to "freeze" the property and make sure that the owner will stop searching for buyers. The owner will give you copy of the titles of the property, plans of the property etc, so your lawyer can go on with his job. Usually, the deposit varies from 1% to 5% of the value of the property. Of course, you should get a receipt for the money you give to the owner and make sure that there are some clauses written in the receipt, such as in which cases you get back your deposit and in which you don't. If you change your mind, you don't get it back, if the owner changes his mind he should give you back the double of the deposit and if the titles are not OK, the owner should fix the problem or give you back your deposit. 3. Appointing a lawyer: you must appoint an english-speaking lawyer for several reasons. First of all, when you go to the notary for signing the purchase contract, you must have by law a lawyer with you, if the value of the property is more than 30.000 euros. As it's almost impossible to find a living-capable property at that amount of money, you are forced to appoint a lawyer. Secondly and most important for you, your lawyer will undertake the task to search the property titles and find out if they are "clean" (does the property belong to the man that claims to be the legitimate owner? is the property free of financial or legal burdens? is there any kind of contest? etc). If the property presents any kind of legal problem, your lawyer will tell you and you'll decide if drop the purchase or wait until the owner will resolve the problem (if it can be resolved). Note that many owners are not aware that their property has legal problems, specially if they did not buy the property but they become its owner by other ways (for example, through an inheritance). 4. Appointing a civil engineer: if you are about to buy a rather new house or appartment, then you probably don't need a civil engineer. But if you are about to buy an older property or land, then you should appoint one in order to check the status of the property. Is it structurally OK? Will you need to make any improvements now or in the near future? Is it possible to add heating system, if there isn't one? Is it possible to add a fire place, if you want one? Can you bring down an internal wall? Specially, if you buy land in order to construct yourself the house of your dreams, the civil engineer will check if the plot is constructable, how many square meters of main and secondary use you can legally construct, what can or cannot do with your property etc. 5. Preliminary contract: if the lawyer and the civil engineer give you the green light, you can proceed with signing a preliminary contract in the presence of a notary. Of course, this means that you'll have to pay the notary cost twice (preliminary and final contract). You can also sign the preliminary contract before your lawyer goes on with his job, in order to be sure that you'll get back your deposit if the purchase procedure will not be completed by owners fault, specially if the amount of the deposit is high. In the preliminary contract you can include more conditional clauses, such as obtaining building permits, obtaining a mortgage etc. Or, you can skip the preliminary contract and go directly to the final contract after you complete the steps below. 6. Getting a tax roll number (A.F.M.): you start with getting this tax file number by submitting an application at a special tax office in Athens. It's free of charge and for EU citizens it's enough to have their ID or passport. Your lawyer could also do that for you. 7. Opening a bank account: then, with your A.F.M. you should open a bank account in Greece. You will need that mainly for the wire transfer of your money from your country, as well as for for other payments regarding the purchase procedure. If you are planning to get a mortgage from a local bank, then you'll have to open an account to that bank. So, it's better for you to apply first to a bank and when you get a positive answer, only thenyou should open the account in that bank,in order to avoid having 2 accounts in 2 different banks (unless you don't mind). 8. Legal origin of funds: in order to prove that the money for the transaction are legal, you can either present a bank statement which shows money transfer from your bank in your country to your greek bank account, or by presenting the receipts of currency exchange (pink slips). 9. Paying taxes and fees: the property transfer taxes are paid by the buyer (9% for the first 15.000€ of the property value and 11% for the remaining amount), before the signing of the final contract. Note that, some times the owner wants that in the contract is written as purchase price the assessed tax value of the property (which is always lower than the real selling price) and not the actual price (of course, this is not legal but it happens in most cases). In that case, the property transfer taxes are much lower than they should be. The buyer also pays the municipal taxes, the VAT (only for new constructions - included in the purchase price), the land registry fee, the notary's fee, his lawyer's fee, the real estate agent's fee and utility fees (such as electricity, water and gas connections). When buying a new appartment from a construction company, you should ask them if the utilities are included in the purchase price (some times they do). Overall, apart from the real estate agent's fee, you should calculate taxes, fees and relative expenses around 10% of the purchase price. Banks usually agree to include these money in the mortgage. 10. Property Registration: after the final purchase contract is signed, the transaction must be declaired to the land registry office by submitting the original contract. The registration procedure will take some time (usually from a week to a month). Only when the contract has been registered you actually become the legal owner of the property.