Here comes Tiresias for property tenants as the scheme enters the government’s plans. As the head of the prime minister’s finance office, Alexis Patelis, said, “In the Recovery Fund we have a project for registering tenants so that the landlord can avoid defaults.”
In the new Teiresia, as revealed by Mr. Patelis, in statements to SKAI, the tenants’ data and their profile will be included. In other words, whether they left rent unpaid to the previous owner or whether they left bills unpaid so that the owners could avoid them.
Regarding the housing issue and short-term reductions, Mr Patelis argued that the problem concerns individual areas and that it makes no sense to prohibit their rental for less than 90 days.
“Previously we had about 100,000 properties available for long-term rental. The total housing stock in Greece is about 10 million. So the number of Airbnbs is not that big. After all, most of them are rented for less than 90 days a year. So what they are saying, banning them from renting for more than 90 days, will not work. This data refers to the whole country.
On the other hand, if you look at each region, there are obviously areas where Airbnb has a much higher percentage. In other words, there are areas where specific properties represent more than 5% of the housing stock, such as the islands, central Athens and Thessaloniki. So here you need to be a little bit careful about what you can do about it.”
The head of the Prime Minister’s economic office also referred to vacant properties.
“However, there is another dimension to the housing problem, which is vacant properties. In other words, we have around 100,000 properties for short-term rental and around 700,000, according to AADE, closed houses,” he noted, saying that incentives should be reconsidered.