On the third line of the engineer's opinion there was a date: 2014.
I didn't notice it on the first read. Neither did Roi. He sent me the document on WhatsApp with a single message: “The buyer is asking to knock off twenty thousand. Says there's a problem with the balcony. Sounds like an excuse to me. What do you think?”
The apartment was in Glyfada, third floor, three rooms. Roi bought it in 2019, rented it out continuously all those years, and now wanted to sell and move the money into a project in Israel. There was already a Greek buyer, a price had been agreed, a draft contract was with the notary. Then the buyer sent an engineer of his own.
I know Roi from that 2019 deal. Back then he wasn't my client. He called to ask one question about purchase tax, got an answer, thanked me politely and said he was already taken care of. He had a Hebrew-speaking broker, a Greek lawyer the broker recommended, and a feeling I hear often, that when all the people around the table are nice, the deal is nice too. For six years it really worked. The tenants paid, the apartment appreciated, and Roi told his friends about it as the best decision he'd ever made.
The engineer did exactly what the buyer asked him to do: he took the original building permit, the approved plans, and stood inside the apartment with a tape measure. What he found was the balcony. In the plan it is marked as a semi-open space, covered, with three walls. In practice someone had closed it with glass and aluminum, added heated flooring, and joined it to the living room. It is exactly the reason Roi's living room looks so spacious in the listing photos.
“But it was already enclosed when I bought it,” Roi told me when I called. “I had an engineer's certificate. The notary signed. Everything was in order.”
He did have a certificate. That's true. In Roi's 2019 deal an engineer's certificate was attached, declaring the state of construction against the permit. The seller brought the engineer. Roi never met him, never spoke to him, and never asked who was paying him. The certificate said there were no deviations. The notary saw a proper document and signed.
And now a different engineer, working for a buyer with the opposite interest, stood on that same balcony and saw something else.
Here is why the date on the third line matters so much. Greek law allows unauthorized construction to be regularized, for a fine, only if it was carried out before 28 July 2011. What was built after that date does not enter the regularization track. The buyer's engineer found satellite images and an old renovation permit, and proved that the balcony was enclosed in 2014. Three years too late.
That is, this is not a problem you pay a fine for and forget. It is a problem with no solution on paper. The only solution is to take it down.
And the law leaves no room for compromise. A transaction in a property with unauthorized construction that has not been regularized is void. Not “problematic,” not “exposed to a claim,” void. The notary the buyer chose for the deal made clear he would not sign as long as the buyer's engineer did not confirm that the apartment matches the permit. The twenty-thousand-euro discount was no longer the issue. The buyer explained politely what had to happen for there to be a deal at all.
I asked Roi one question: “And what about the engineer from 2019?”
Silence. And then: “I don't even remember what his name was.”
I asked our partners in Greece to check whether it was possible to go back to him. It is still being looked into, and I'm not especially optimistic. Even if there are grounds, it would be a long proceeding in a foreign country against a man Roi never met. The deal wasn't going to wait for it.
In the end Roi took down the enclosure. Glass, frames, the heated floor. The living room returned to the size in the permit, the apartment was photographed again, and the buyer asked for a reduction in price anyway, because the apartment he had seen was no longer the apartment he was buying. Between the works, the two-month delay and the discount, it cost Roi a bit more than what the buyer had originally offered to knock off.
“For six years I've been renting out an unlawful apartment,” he told me in our last conversation, “and I didn't know.”
That is the part that bothers me in this story. Not the balcony. The fact that the problem sat there the whole time, quiet, waiting for a single moment: the day someone with the opposite interest gets the tape measure. In Roi's case it was a buyer. For another investor it could be a neighbor who complains, a municipal inspector, or a bank appraising the property.
And there is something else I think about. When Roi bought, he paid for the big living room. The enclosed balcony was part of the price, part of the photos, part of the rent. He paid for square meters that were never truly his, held them for about seven years, and in the end paid again to get rid of those square meters. Nobody cheated him in any dramatic way. It's just that nobody who worked for him stood on the balcony with a tape measure.
A certificate that someone else ordered for you does not tell you the apartment is lawful. It tells you only that someone wrote that it is.
The question I would ask in your place
- Who wrote the engineer's certificate attached to my deal, who chose him, and who paid him?
- Has anyone compared the apartment as it is today to the original building permit, or only to the photos in the listing?
- If I were selling tomorrow, do I know what the buyer's engineer will find?
Stories are based on real situations, with identifying details changed. Not legal advice.
Translated from the Hebrew original. עברית