The Parthenon-view condo
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The Parthenon-view condo is a specific Athens apartment John Kiriakou has been tracking on a Greek property app, and the occasion for his account of how the city's residential market emptied and then collapsed.

The obsession and the app

Answering viewers discussing Greek real estate, Kiriakou volunteered that he is "absolutely freaking obsessed with real estate in Greece and I use this app every single day. It's called Sptogatoss. It means house cat." (The auto-caption garbles the name; the app is Spitogatos.) His stated intention is to buy in Athens.

Why prices went up

The rise, in his account, was driven by residency rather than housing. Invest €200,000 or €250,000 and "you get a golden visa", so Athens property "was being bought up, like all of it, by Russians, Chinese, and Israelis. Not because they want to live in in Athens, but because just in case things turned to [expletive] and they needed to run somewhere."

What the absentee owners did with it

Because they were not living there, "they turn all those units into Airbnbs. I haven't I can't even tell you the last time I stayed in a hotel in Athens. I always stay in Airbnbs."

The consequence for residents: "there's now no residential real estate available for rent, right? All of the empty apartments are now Airbnbs and they're all owned by foreigners."

The ban, and the fall

A law passed a couple of weeks before the broadcast stopped the conversions, no new real estate inside the city of Athens may become an Airbnb, though existing ones remain. "And prices now have fallen like a stone."

The apartment he has his eye on is the illustration. "I've been looking at this one condo. It's on the eighth floor of a building and the the view of the Parthonon is like a punch in your face. It's like right there in front of you, right? Exactly the kind of place that I want. It went up to €600,000 and it's back down to €250,000."

Told it was therefore the time to buy, Kiriakou agreed, noting that interest rates were about to drop in Europe and that an EU national can obtain even an investment loan, though "I'd like to pay cash if I have the opportunity to do it."

See also

- Kiriakou's Athens house
- The Cats Of Athens
- The Greek Brain Drain
