Greece’s “heavy” industry is changing hands, with 204 hotels and tourists accommodations being listed for sale in the last 30 days through real estate classifieds websites.
The data recorded in a new report by the Pan-Hellenic Real Estate Network E-Real Estates show that the high availability is recorded mainly in hotels of a smaller category from 10 to 30 rooms, hotel units and tourist accommodations that all these years have been operating on a family basis, constituting a pillar of small and medium entrepreneurship.
Among those for sale are also 4 and 5 star facilities.
“The financial outstandings of each entrepreneur, successive crises, loans, other chronic arrangements, energy costs which, in relation to inflation and the appreciation of goods in the supply chain, have reduced incomes and increased expenses”, says the president of E-Real Estates, Themistoklis Bakas.
At the same time, from the beginning of the year until May 31, a total of 111 auctions of hotel units were posted, while in the whole of last year, 323 auctions were posted according to the eauction.gr platform.
Foreign funds mainly the buyers of large hotel units
The funds of foreign and domestic interests target the real estate market both through real estate purchases from individuals, but also through the acquisition of real estate and hotel units through “pink” loans. That is, businesses in the tourism industry – hotel units that cannot cope with their loan obligations and are now on the verge of going “in the red,”
“The funds negotiate either the acquisition of the loan and the mortgages through a haircut of the receivables, transferring the debt – receivables to their own portfolio, where the borrower will now be liable to them for the payment of the monthly installments, or through the refinancing of the companies with a guarantee the shares and their assets or through a combination, loan acquisition through haircut of the receivables and simultaneous refinancing”, Bakas said.
The choice of refinancing or the purchase of the loan in a fund is now chosen by several hoteliers of large units in top tourist destinations due to the financial problems.
Areas with the most hotels being sold off include Attica in areas frequented by tourists in central Athens and districts such Plaka, Gazi, Psyri and Omonoia.
Listed for sale are also traditional tourist destinations in Crete and Peloponnese as well as in popular islands in the Aegean and the Ionian Sea such Mykonos, Santorini, Zakynthos, Paros, Naxos, Skopelos, and others.
Tables of hotels and accommodations for sale by region here in Greek.