Brexit and Greek mortgages: what actually changed for UK buyers

Start with what did not change

British citizens can still buy property in Greece. There is no post-Brexit ban, no additional purchase tax aimed at UK nationals, and no requirement to hold residency before you complete. Ownership rights over the property itself are the same as they were.

The one long-standing restriction that catches people out has nothing to do with Brexit. Greece designates certain border regions and islands as areas where non-EU buyers need clearance from a decentralised administration committee before purchase. This applies to parts of the north, the Dodecanese and several other border areas. It predates Brexit by decades, but it now catches British buyers because it applies to non-EU nationals, and UK citizens are now in that group. It is usually a process rather than a refusal, but it takes time and it needs to be identified early, not discovered at the notary.

What did change: your lending category

Greek banks assess mortgage applications differently depending on whether the applicant is an EU resident or a third-country national. Before 2021 a British buyer sat in the first group. Now you sit in the second.

The practical effect shows up in two places. The first is the loan-to-value ceiling. Greek lenders publish materially different maximums for the two groups: Alpha Bank, for example, sets out lending of up to 80 per cent of commercial value for applicants living in an EU country and up to 70 per cent for those living outside it. Other Greek banks apply their own versions of the same distinction, and in practice non-resident lending across the market often lands somewhere in the 50 to 70 per cent range once the individual profile is assessed.

The second is the term. The same published criteria commonly shorten the maximum term for non-EU applicants, in Alpha Bank's case to 20 years against 25 for EU residents. A shorter term on the same loan means a higher monthly payment, and affordability is tested on that higher figure. It is a quieter change than the deposit, and it catches more people out.

Take those published numbers as an orientation to the shape of the difference rather than as a quote. The figure that applies to you depends on the lender, your income, the property and where it is.

What that means in cash

Moving from an 80 per cent ceiling to a 70 per cent one does not increase your deposit by 10 per cent. It increases it by half again: from a fifth of the price to just under a third. On a €300,000 property that is the difference between roughly €60,000 and €90,000, and the €30,000 gap has to come from the same savings that are also paying the purchase costs.

Those costs are separate and payable in cash. Transfer tax, notary fees, Land Registry or Ktimatologio registration, legal fees, the lender's valuation and bank charges sit on top of the deposit rather than inside the loan. Budgeting the deposit and then discovering the costs is the single most common planning error we see from UK buyers, and the shift in the loan-to-value ceiling has made it more expensive to get wrong.

The documentation is heavier, and that is not personal

Non-resident applications require more evidence than resident ones: identity, proof of address, UK tax records, several years of income documentation, bank statements, evidence of existing borrowing and evidence of where the deposit came from. Documents generally need official translation into Greek, and some require an apostille.

You will also need a Greek tax number, the AFM, and usually a Greek bank account, both of which take time to arrange from abroad. None of this is a judgement on your creditworthiness. It is the standard file for someone whose financial life is documented in another jurisdiction, and the delays it causes are entirely predictable, which means they can be planned around.

One thing that does not transfer is your UK credit history. A strong UK credit file is not visible to a Greek lender in the way it would be to a British one, so the assessment rests on documented income, existing commitments and the property rather than on a score.

The 90-day limit is the change people underestimate

Owning a property in Greece does not give you the right to live in it. As a third-country national you may spend up to 90 days in any rolling 180-day period across the Schengen area, unless you hold a residence permit or a national visa.

For a family who previously spent the spring and most of the summer at their house, this is a genuine restriction rather than a technicality, and the allowance is consumed by any Schengen travel, not only time in Greece. It is worth working out honestly, before you buy, how much of the year you actually intend to be there. If the answer is more than three months, the finance question and the immigration question need to be solved together, and the immigration one should probably be solved first.

There is a route that runs the other way. Greece's Golden Visa residency-by-investment programme remains open to non-EU nationals and continues to accept qualifying property investment, at a time when Spain has closed its programme and Portugal has removed the property route. Brexit made British buyers eligible for a programme they were previously excluded from as EU citizens. Thresholds vary by area and have changed more than once, so treat this as an orientation and take current advice from a Greek immigration lawyer. If you are financing the purchase, ask specifically whether a mortgaged portion still counts toward the qualifying amount.

Currency became a bigger part of the picture

This one is not a Brexit rule, but it interacts with everything above. Your income and savings are in sterling; the price, the mortgage and the running costs are in euros. Movement between agreeing a purchase and completing it changes the sterling cost of the deposit, and it keeps changing the sterling cost of every monthly payment afterwards.

Because third-country status has pushed the cash element of a Greek purchase upward, the amount exposed to that movement is larger than it would have been for the same buyer a decade ago. Decide when and how you intend to convert, and check the rate against your budget rather than against a figure you remember from a previous trip.

Questions UK buyers ask

Continue your research

• Using UK home equity to buy in Greece
• Start a personal Greek mortgage scan