Mortgage industry of the United Kingdom

The Finance Ministry is planning to include an additional 2,000 districts across the country in the system of taxable property rates known as objective values.

Sources say that the whole of Greece will have been included in the system by the end of the first quarter of 2020, which means a total of some 7,500 districts will be incorporated.

Property surveyors will from now on undertake the adjustment of the taxable real estate rates known as objective values, according to a regulation submitted to Parliament on Thursday for ratification. This means that the extraordinary procedure employed in 2018 with the chartered surveyors will turn permanent as of 2019.

Following a nearly five-month slowdown, house sales in Turkey rose significantly in June, mainly thanks to interest rate cuts in banks' mortgage loans and discounts by real estate companies.

The rapidly growing home sharing market is the reason for the small increase in interest in taking out a mortgage in Greece.

That trend is confirmed by bank data that show about a 50 percent rise in mortgage applications and a 30 percent increase in savings in the first five months of 2018 compared to the same period last year.

Chartered surveyors are undertaking the difficult task of adjusting the property rates used for taxation purposes (known as "objective values") for 2018.

Professionals in the property sector are warning that the auctioning of tens of thousands of buildings in the next few years could evolve into an unknown - probably negative - factor regarding the course of prices in the market.

A considerable portion of the existing stock of unsold residences across Greece is expected to remain empty and looks set for gradual abandonment, a trend likely to grow when the market finally revives.