Properties in Greece

Greece offers overseas buyers an amazing range of geographies, climates and lifestyles to choose from. For a start, it has well over 200 inhabited islands – and each is different. Even within the same island groups, the geography can be strikingly varied. How easy they are to reach from the UK can vary too. Come with us as we take a tour of the country to find where to buy in Greece.

Greece is a large country, but three quarters of it is mountainous and barely inhabited. It has a total area just over half the size of the UK, yet with just a sixth of the population. All those islands provide a Mediterranean coastline five times longer than Spain’s and twice as long as Italy’s.

Greece is also relatively undeveloped. Although at the height of summer as many as 150,000 tourists can arrive each day, it still doesn’t have the highly developed mass tourist facilities of Spain. You can still find your own unspoiled island paradise here!

A good start is to divide your options into mainland and island groups.

Mainland

Attica and Athens

Athens, with an urban population of three million, is the oldest western capital city and one of the grandest. It was seriously spruced up for the 2004 Olympics and, until the financial crisis, was wealthy, impressive and confident. Over the past decade, the city has been hit by the financial crisis – and it shows. The amount of graffiti at street level can be off-putting, but will hopefully be removed when civic pride improves, along with the Greek economy and employment. Despite the graffiti and frequent strikes, the city functions well. There are still plenty of people with money to pack out the restaurants and keep the smart shops in business. The kindness and friendliness of Athenians is exceptional and many people speak English. There are also good expat networks.

Athens offers the possibility of year round life and entertainment, with plenty to do in the winter months and frequent, inexpensive year-round flights from the UK. Most property is in the form of apartment blocks, normally of six storeys. As in any major city, you need to be careful about where you buy. Like any capital city, Athens has plenty of expensive properties in leafy neighbourhoods – consider Kolonaki and Plaka – or apartments in trendy city centre locations, such as Psiri or Exarchia.

The region surrounding Athens is called Attica, and has good coastal options for properties. However, you will be competing with wealthy Athenians, so they’re not cheap. The Apollo Coast, also known as the Athenian Riviera, stretches for 50 kilometres from Piraeus in a series of resorts that are lively for most of the year. Central Grece

It’s never very hard to escape the tourist side of Greece, but the central mainland of Greece feels like little has changed for hundreds of years. It’s rural, with the vast plain of Thessaly filled with wheat fields, cattle farms and orchards, surrounded by mountains, forests and the sea. It is here that you see monasteries built on outrageously high cliffs. Houses are inexpensive, built from the local red stone, usually half timbered. You really are in deepest Greece here, more like the rest of the Balkan region to which Greece officially belongs. The region can be cold and wet with heavy snowfall.

There are coastal resorts too. On the Aegean coast consider the Pelion peninsula. It’s a little pricey, but relatively easy to each via the port and airport at Volos. On the Ionian coast, the resort of Parga is famous for its beauty.

Peloponnese

The Peloponnese is a large section of Greece, home to 10% of the population and dripping with history, including Ancient Olympia – site of the original Games – Mycenae and Corinth. It has snowcapped mountains, lush valleys, fertile plains where the famous Kalamata olives come from, and a sensational coastline. It is relatively undeveloped for tourists, although the upmarket Costa Navarino and Amanzoe resorts are making a name for themselves and EasyJet has direct flights into Kalamata in the south west.

Island

Ionian Islands

The seven main Ionian islands include the ever-popular Corfu and the increasingly popular Kefalonia. Corfu has a long tradition of welcoming British expats – most famously the Durrell family in the 1930s – and the several thousand British residents even have their own cricket teams. Corfu Town has an attractive Italianate waterfront while the northwest corner of the island’s nickname “Kensington On Sea” may give you an idea of the usual clientele and the prices there. The property market in Kefalonia has been boosted by direct flights in summer. Property here is more likely to be modern and purpose built holiday villas and apartments. Zakynthos has been a tourist favourite for decades, offering both easy summertime access and a good chance of holiday rental income.

Being the closest part of Greece to the UK, the Ionian islands offer the option of travelling overland via France and Italy and then by ferry.