Bureaucracy compounding real estate woes

Given the frustrating, costly and time-consuming process involved in the simple transaction of buying and selling property, Greece continues to languish at the lower end of the pile in world rankings regarding the ease of doing business, alongside Third World countries, with some even climbing above it since last year.

Indicatively, the volume of bureaucracy required to sell an apartment is greater than in countries like the Solomon Islands, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Cambodia and Somalia.

And the situation is constantly deteriorating, either because documents and supporting documents are continuously being added to the already long list of requirements, or because other countries are improving their own systems, and leapfrogging Greece in the process.

According to the latest annual report of the World Bank on the ease of doing business, Greece placed 156th among...