The conditions under which will be tax-free for three years, the rents that will arise from properties that are closed, clarified the Minister of National Economy and Finance, Kostis Hatzidakis, from the frequency of the First Program.
There will be conditions, he noted, so that there will be no injustice to all other owners who have already rented their homes and paid taxes.
"Because there is a housing shortage and we want to immediately, if possible, increase the supply of housing to address the issue to some extent of rental prices, what we are doing is saying if you have your house closed for at least three years, not if your tenant left two 2 months ago, you have your house closed for three years, if your house is under 120 square meters, because we are interested in middle and lower incomes and you rent it out until the end of December 2025, if all these three conditions are met, then for three years you will not pay tax, and it is a special measure, an extraordinary measure to deal with an extraordinary problem," the Minister said.
"We have an increased problem, the housing problem. The government will present later this week and in more detail all our new initiatives on housing. Indeed, there is an issue here of inflation—price increases, to be more precise—which is significant. It affects a significant part of the family budget. That is why there is now, since 22, and rightly so, obviously, a reboot of the country's housing policy as a whole. The My Home program has been running. Now My House 2 will be presented. There are other individual programs funded by the European Union. There is the Renovate-Home program. We have made some interventions in short-term rentals since last year. Now more will be announced," Hatzidakis said.
"We have a situation from which the landlords are obviously benefiting, because both property prices and rental prices have risen due to growth. The landlords are gaining from this; let's not forget that, because they are Greeks too, but on the other hand, the tenants are losing, mainly the lower incomes, and even more so, the young couples who want to start their lives are being squeezed," the Minister added.
For this reason, he continued, the government is paying particular attention to this. "There are problems that are both here and elsewhere; they are of modern society and certainly of our time in Greece, such as housing, such as demographic problems, such as climate change, with all the disruption it can create in the state and in our daily lives, which the Prime Minister sought to highlight in his speech in Thessaloniki. But we always seek to move within the limits of the budget and the economy, because if we go beyond certain limits and move in a populist way, then today's hosanna will become tomorrow's crucifixion. We have the lessons of the past decade, and we must always move with seriousness, stability, and housekeeping.
