Thessaloniki: Difficulty finding housing and high rents preoccupied the municipal council – Greece
The difficulty of finding housing, the lack of rented apartments due to the conversion of part of the stocks into short-term rental accommodation and the high rents in Thessaloniki, occupied the municipal council of the central municipality.
The difficulty of finding housing, the lack of rental apartments due to the conversion of part of the stocks into short-term rental accommodation and the high rents in Thessaloniki, occupied the municipal council of the central municipality, in an extraordinary meeting with all stakeholders, realtors, realtors.
The special meeting was held at the request of the municipal party “The City Upside Down – Force of Overthrow”, which in the past had collected signatures of citizens of Thessaloniki on the problem of finding housing, especially in the city center.
The mayor, Konstantinos Zervas, during his installation, said that its administration wants “Thessaloniki and its center alive. We want a vibrant city. City habitable. The city that will continue to receive tourists, but at the same time will give the opportunity to its citizens to stay inside, to start a family, to be housed “.
Mr. Zervas stressed that sustainable and integrated models are being examined to provide social protection and affordable housing to those in need based on good practices and that the request of KEDE is supported so that the “orphan real estates, but and those who are entangled and forgotten, the heirs have been lost and unfortunately if they are not declared they will generally go to the public. “
He stressed, based on the above, the mayor, such as the Local Government, due to its proximity to the problem and the citizen, can turn a raw and abandoned property from a simple registration on a public platform “into a house, a tile, in a warm and safe home for anyone in need “.
According to data provided during the discussion by the president of the Panhellenic Association of Real Estate Managers, Andreas Chios, in Thessaloniki today the active real estate in the short-term lease is 1,824, with a total of over 25,000 inhabitants. “It is 5-6%. “This percentage cannot increase the cost of rents for the remaining 95%,” he said.
Konstantinos Tzaros, president of the Association of Real Estate Agents of Thessaloniki, said for his part that the rise in rents is observed in the market of the urban complex and the historic center of the city in the last five years and that in the last two years -due to the pandemic- stabilized. As he mentioned, in addition to the conversion of the apartments to Airbnb, the financial crisis and the inability of people to get a mortgage and buy a house are also responsible for the situation, something that happened in previous years, which led more people to seek rental. .
Christina Sakali, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Ghent, said the housing problem would continue to be a concern in the future “first, because homes returning from short-term rentals are designed to meet the needs of tourists with high rents and not . to permanent residents and secondly in Greece we are in a transitional phase in the property regime, from a society of private ownership to an era of post-ownership and post-ownership “.
Also, the president of the Association of Property Owners of Thessaloniki, Costas Haidoutis, expressed his opinion that there is no problem in the city center and stressed that “other discussions should not lead to a situation of the past that we discussed about controlled leases, the so-called rent “.
Shortly before the start of the special meeting, members of the “The City Upside Down” faction, as well as students, gathered outside the City Hall demanding measures to reduce rents.
With information from ΑΠΕ-ΜΠΕ
Photo of INITIME file