“It looked like the deal of a lifetime. A whole building for the price of an apartment in Tel Aviv,” David told me when he came to my office two years ago, after losing about a quarter of a million euros in Athens.
His story begins in 2019. David, an experienced developer who had built and renovated dozens of projects in Israel, saw the headlines about the tourism boom in Greece and the “crazy” Airbnb prices in Athens. “Everyone's talking about it,” he thought, “I have to get into this.”
The building he bought looked perfect on paper: 850,000 euros, in a quiet residential area, with potential for 24 studio apartments. “I told myself: in Israel I'd pay three times as much for something like this.”
But Greece is not Israel.
The first trouble began with the local engineer, who explained to him in broken English: “Mr. David, this is not simple like you think.” It turned out that converting an office building to residential is not just a matter of renovations - it is an exhausting 18-month bureaucratic journey through a maze of committees, approvals and stamps.
“Every day I would discover another law, another regulation, another form that no one had mentioned to me before,” he sighed. “And splitting into small apartments? It's like asking to lead an elephant through a keyhole.”
The real hurdle was at the Greek land registry. A system that looks as though it hasn't changed since the days of the Byzantine Empire. Registering 24 separate units required not only detailed architectural plans, but also a separate legal opinion for each room, official translations, and notary certifications that cost more than the renovations themselves.
“I sat in a lawyer's office in Athens, seeing the piles of files on his desk,” David recalled. “I asked him how long it would take. He smiled and said: 'In Greece, we don't count time, we count patience.'”
After two years of bureaucratic struggle, when at last everything was ready, the big surprise arrived: the tourists did not come.
The building in the Neos Kosmos area looked great on the map, but in reality - 25 minutes from the Acropolis is not “close to the center.” The view does not include the Parthenon, and the atmosphere is more “quiet residential neighborhood” and less “mythical Athens.”
“I realized that tourists don't come to Athens to experience what it's like to be Greek. They want to be tourists,” David says with a bitter smile. Instead of the 100 euros a night he had planned, he had to settle for 45 euros - if he found tenants at all.
The final change came in 2022, when the Greek government began restricting Airbnb licenses in central Athens. “Suddenly everyone started to understand that prices in the center would go through the roof, and areas like mine would stay empty.”
David sold the property at a loss of 200,000 euros. “It's more expensive than any MBA course I ever took,” he sums up.
What I learned from David's story (and my recommendations to you)
1. Don't rely on “everybody says” - every investment abroad requires independent, in-depth research. McKinsey & Company found in 2023 that 70% of the demand for short-term rentals is concentrated within a radius of only 2 km from the tourist center. Distance is everything.
2. Local regulation is king - every country has its own rules, and sometimes they change in real time. PwC recommends: “Successful real estate investments abroad require a deep understanding of the local culture - not only economic but also bureaucratic.”
3. All that glitters is not gold - as Warren Buffett said: “Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing” - and it is most dangerous when you think you know.
Stories are based on real situations, with identifying details changed. Not legal advice.
Translated from the Hebrew original. עברית