How the Building Factor Transfer Is About to Unlock Thousands of Stuck Real Estate Transactions Across Greece

On a weekday morning, if you stroll through Kolonaki’s older blocks, you’ll see three and four-story buildings with dust-grey shutters, a notary’s seal affixed to the door, and occasionally a faded “for sale” sign that has been there long enough to curl at the edges. The Greeks have a term for these locations. They refer to them as frozen. Not deserted, not abandoned, but caught between a building file that hasn’t moved in years, a co-owner who won’t sign, and an heir who can’t sell. Quietly, the reform pertaining to Building Factor Transfer has the potential to finally thaw them.

The concept of the mechanism itself is not new. For many years, Greek planning law has permitted the detachment and transfer of unused building coefficients, or air rights, above a restricted or listed property to another buildable plot. It hardly ever worked in practice. The compensation pool was underfunded, the framework was convoluted, and there was just no digital infrastructure to monitor transfers. As a result, thousands of protected building owners—many of whom were inherited—sat on properties that they were unable to develop, sell, or extract true value from.

The plumbing is currently changing. In areas designated for increased density, the state has started matching donor properties—listed or restricted buildings—with receiver plots. The cadastre digitization initiative has made it feasible to track these rights through the registry for the first time without having to spend weeks on paper records. Since late 2025, notaries in Athens report a slight but noticeable increase in inquiries. Something that was theoretical for a generation seems to be coming to life.

Here, skepticism is warranted. Greek reforms have a history of appearing promising in the legislative text but failing to materialize in practice. A reliable price-discovery system for these air rights and developers’ willingness to incorporate them into projects that are already profitable are still prerequisites for the transfer mechanism. Property bar skeptics point out that transactions could stall in disagreements over the true value of a square meter of unused coefficient in the absence of strong valuation guidelines. That reluctance seems reasonable.

However, the overall image encourages movement. In the first quarter of 2025, prices in Athens increased 7.6% year over year, demand continues to exceed supply by about 5,000 units every year, and Piraeus values have increased 84% since 2019—a figure that continues to astound even those who have kept a close eye on the port city. With projects like Etolikou 11 in central Piraeus and the Riviera Residence series along the southern coast, developers like MIBS Group have already demonstrated what disciplined positioning in transitioning neighborhoods looks like. Their research suggests that transferred building rights will probably be concentrated in areas where density bonuses directly result in profitable returns.

Human texture is also important. Last spring, a retired civil engineer from Plaka whose family owns a listed neoclassical building told a local newspaper that his grandchildren had given up on ever doing anything with the structure. Families like his could finally profit from the unused volume without compromising the protected façade if the transfer mechanism functions as promised. This is the quiet promise—a gradual unsticking of files that have been waiting, in some cases, since the 1980s, rather than a dramatic revolution.

The next eighteen months will determine whether it truly delivers. As this develops, it’s difficult to avoid the impression that Greece has unintentionally discovered a tool that better suits its market than the controversial Golden Visa modifications ever did.