Owners can’t sell as their demands are excessive
Property market professionals report a gap ranging around 15% to 25% on average between the asking prices and the prices at which the sales are finally made, which means there is plenty of room for prospective buyers to bargain.
As they explain, this significant distance arises mainly due to excessive expectations that many sellers have, especially in the cases of older apartments, which also require the corresponding work in order to be modernized.
“Indeed, we find that on average there is a discrepancy of 15%-20%, between the price that one will see in the ad and the one at which the transaction will finally be completed,” Lefteris Potamianos, president of the Association of Realtors of Athens-Attica, tells Kathimerini. This mainly concerns older properties, since the prices of new constructions completed during this period are clearly more difficult to reduce, being less flexible due to construction costs and contractor profit.
“The problem arises when the asking prices of old apartments – e.g. 30-40 years old – is very close to the prices of a newly built property in the same area,” notes Panos Haralambopoulos, head of the real estate valuation company Solum and member of the RICS Greece Advisory Board. According to him, in these cases, which are the general rule in today’s market, in order to complete a sale, significant concessions must be made by the owner.
Recently, an old apartment in Kolonaki was sold for 900,000 euros, when the original asking price was €1.2 million – i.e. 25% higher. That apartment also needed significant renovation, so in order to sell, the price had to be significantly reduced, as the seller had effectively included the cost of the renovation in the asking price, even though the relevant work had not been done.
Accordingly, in the cases of many advertisements for the sale of apartments in Athens’ northern or southern suburbs, one observes exaggerated demands, as the money requested does not correspond to the assets’ real value. For example, for a 105-square-meter, 35-year-old, first-floor apartment in Maroussi the owner asks for €350,000 and although it is advertised as renovated, as can be seen from photos, it has only been painted.
