{"id":4233,"date":"2026-10-28T07:34:45","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T07:34:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bricksandmortarmgt.com\/?p=4233"},"modified":"2026-10-28T07:37:24","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T07:37:24","slug":"bmm-greece-adios-and-efcharisto-to-our-beloved-athens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bricksandmortarmgt.com\/zh_hk\/2026\/10\/bmm-greece-adios-and-efcharisto-to-our-beloved-athens\/","title":{"rendered":"BMM Greece – adios and efcharist\u00f3 to our beloved Athens"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Grexit Th<\/span>eme a strong performer<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Long term readers may recall how we started studying the oversold Greek property market back in 2015-6 for a possible reversal bounce. Thanks to the confidence and trust of a small band of believers, we launched on this investment theme starting 2017, and the market has been very much a one way rising streak for us:<\/p>\n

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We first started buying in 2017 and first began taking profit in 2023 (slightly early but not a bad call given the still bloated bureaucracy dogging some of our exits – a story for another time!). In USD terms we also caught the bottom of the cycle (<\/span>red line<\/b> <\/span>below), and began selling when prices exceeded the GFC peak in Euro terms (<\/span>blue<\/b><\/span>):<\/span><\/p>\n

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Given the brewing of another bigger sovereign debt crisis in Europe, and the worsening geopolitical outlook (Greece could perversely benefit as a fringe region and receive fleeing capital from neighbouring conflict jurisdictions, so may not be all bad), now is a time to close out this theme, until the coast is clear for us to revisit Greece next cycle.<\/p>\n

Relative winner too, not just absolute gains<\/span><\/p>\n

We are happy to also see how the Greek market gained significantly more than many mainstream property peers from the 2017 bottom to now, eg. Athens prices are up 153% vs HK:<\/p>\n

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Against the a favourite investment of Hongkongers – London – Athens also outran by 126% in the same period:\"\"<\/p>\n

The only exception is our current top favoured destination – Perth – Athens peaked (coincidentally when we started disposing in 2023) when we began going overweight W Australia in a big way, which has now outperformed Athens some 30%:<\/span><\/p>\n

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From frog to prince? How Greece looks now…<\/span><\/p>\n

Macro conditions are better but probably not sustainable enough going forward, because on many factors, Greece’s recoveries are not strong enough to lead to long term continued improvements:<\/p>\n

a) debt recovery did not reach a self balancing level<\/u> before global ZIRP has turned into high interest rate environment:<\/p>\n

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Despite refrained govt spending, debt levels have still been rising (<\/span>blue line <\/span>below), and although GDP growth has caught up since 2020, the gap remains too large to close:<\/span><\/p>\n

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b) <\/span>still large trade deficit <\/u>to sustain balance of payment improvements:<\/span><\/p>\n

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c) <\/span>demographic headwind remains stron<\/u>g – despite recent spike in immigration (<\/span>red line<\/span> below), the ageing population and accelerating negative natural growth rate (<\/span>blue line<\/span>) will pose huge challenges for productivity.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Further immigration momentum is now curtailed due to govt raising thresholds (eg the Property transfer tax backlash, see Article 4<\/span><\/a>), and potentially China’s shutting of emigration routes which has provided the largest group of migrants to date (see Article 1 <\/span><\/a>– How Chinese investors quietly transformed Athens \u2013 one visa at a time<\/em>).<\/p>\n

The main source of immigrants are currently tax refugees (see Article 3<\/span><\/a> – Will the last millionaire to quit socialist Britain for sunny, low-tax, Thatcherite Greece please turn out the eco-lightbulbs<\/em>), but local supply challenges may continue to pressure govt to close the gates further (see Article 2<\/span><\/a>).<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/span><\/p>\n

So we are glad we have captured this rewarding and culturally most enriching jouring, but for the near future, it is adio (\u0391\u03bd\u03c4\u03af\u03bf) Athena, and thanks for all the fish…<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Long term readers may recall how we started studying the oversold Greek property market back in 2015-6 for a possible reversal bounce. Thanks to…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":4249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","content-type":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1990],"tags":[1994,2001,2002,1995,1996,1992,2004,1158,1156,1366,1999,1997,2003,1998,1586,1993,2000],"class_list":["post-4233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-greece","tag-athens-property","tag-european-real-estate","tag-expat-investing","tag-golden-visa","tag-government-debt","tag-greek-real-estate","tag-grexit","tag-hong-kong","tag-london","tag-macroeconomics","tag-perth-real-estate","tag-property-cycle","tag-property-investing","tag-property-transfer-tax","tag-sovereign-debt-crisis","tag-trade-deficit","tag-wealth-migration"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/bricksandmortarmgt.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/images.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bricksandmortarmgt.com\/zh_hk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bricksandmortarmgt.com\/zh_hk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bricksandmortarmgt.com\/zh_hk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bricksandmortarmgt.com\/zh_hk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bricksandmortarmgt.com\/zh_hk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4233"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/bricksandmortarmgt.com\/zh_hk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4254,"href":"https:\/\/bricksandmortarmgt.com\/zh_hk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4233\/revisions\/4254"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bricksandmortarmgt.com\/zh_hk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bricksandmortarmgt.com\/zh_hk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bricksandmortarmgt.com\/zh_hk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bricksandmortarmgt.com\/zh_hk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}