Hatzidakis: Whoever buys property with golden visa, will not be able to give it for airbnb

‘ He is not allowed to buy by giving the property then for Airbnb,” he said today (21.3.2024) in the First Kostis Hatzidakis noted that Golden Visa is 7% of the trade in the real estate market, but no doubt affects Mr. Hatzidakis said, adding that the proceeds from Golden Visa were around 2.5 billion euros in 2023 of investments and capital coming from abroad. “So it’s something that concerns us and we don’t go lightly. But because they are pushing real estate prices exactly, despite the fact that funds are coming from outside, because they are pushing property prices upwards, we come and bring arrangements. What has been the case so far. That to get Golden Visa by buying real estate in Greece until recently it was 250,000 euros to bring to buy a property. This has already risen to Athens for some months to 500,000 and Thessaloniki. Not all over Athens. Central, north and south. West remained lower. Now we go to 800,000 in Athens, Thessaloniki and the tourist islands. We say that the person who buys with golden visa is not allowed to give the property then to Airbnb, we say that the property cannot be below 120 square meters. And we are talking about all this to direct investors to properties of great value and yet properties that are not for the so-called popular residence and certainly for the new couples who want to start their lives,” said Mr. Hatzidakis. “It is impossible anywhere in the world to climb the economy and keep the individual prices low. So the real estate went up with the economy. Did any of them win this? Yeah, the property owners. It’s the Greek citizens, so we can have the whole picture. Are some people losing to it? Did real estate go up more than average inflation rates? They rose more than average inflation growth. And that is why the government has started about two years ago, a number of initiatives, since I was in the Ministry of Labour, to relaunch the government’s housing policy and we have already advanced these initiatives. I would remind you of the project called My Home, which, among other things, had cheap housing loans, which were immediately made available at an interest rate of about 1% and already approved 10,000 loans, have been disbursed 5,000 loans etc. Other initiatives, ‘I save for young people’, “I save – Rent” to make the houses available etc. At the same time, apart from all this, we came last December and took initiatives on Airbnb, short-term leases which are undoubtedly an important factor in distortion, because it increases demand too much, especially in the cities that have both a tourist character or have students. That is why we came and took a number of measures, including that those who rent 2 or more, i.e. 3, 4, 5 apartments, will no longer be considered small – incomers who simply have an additional income from Airbnb but regular entrepreneurs, so they are equalised to the other businesses and pay VAT etc. We will see in September how these measures worked, we will make a fund as it is said and decide how to continue afterwards,” the minister added.