New objective values to be put off
The Finance Ministry is about to postpone the revision of the real estate assessments used for tax purposes, known as «objective» property values, by six months. The delay until the end of June 2011 instead of the start of the year will be used for the optimum preparation of the relevant committees, while the new values are set to bring about a new method of calculation in order to avoid the distortions often seen now. At the same time, this delay will allow the property market to take a breath after having been battered by the financial crisis, heavy taxation and the increasingly difficult access to bank funding for mortgage loans. The Finance Ministry’s general secretary, Dimitris Georgakopoulos, admitted that the market is under pressure and an increase in objective values closer to the actual market prices would constitute an additional problem. He stressed that the government is now having second thoughts abut the timing of the revision in order to allow the market more time to adjust to the current situation and for the system to be completed. He did add, however, that some 6,000 areas will be added to the system of objective values. The additional revenues expected from the new objective values may come with a six-month delay but the government aims to offset this loss through the immediate inclusion into the system of those new areas, mostly on islands where properties are currently exempt from taxes such as the single property tax or the large property tax. These areas are primarily on the Aegean Islands as well as in popular tourism regions, such as Crete, Halkidiki and parts of the Peloponnese. The government’s long-term goal is to include all of the country in the system. What is more important, however, according to real estate professionals, is to ensure in the future that there is automatic adjustment of objective values to market prices.
