Odyssey of property sales

The process of selling a house in Greece has started to look like an odyssey, after the developments of the last few weeks.

The effort made, with specific legislative and regulatory interventions, to reduce the time required and the paperwork that accompanies every act of buying and selling real estate, has caused notaries to refrain from their duties, stifling activity in the real estate market at the worst possible time.

Traditionally, the last month of the year is also the most dynamic when it comes to the completion of purchase and sale contracts, essentially constituting the escalation of many months of efforts by sellers and buyers, in order to gather the dozens of required documents that accompany each transaction.

The president of the Association of Realtors of Athens-Attica, Lefteris Potamianos, commented that notaries refraining from their duties in...