After more than a decade of decline, Greece’s mortgage market is showing signs of revival. Banks are ramping up efforts to attract new borrowers, focusing on middle-aged households as they roll out targeted lending strategies and competitive offers.
Mortgage lending in Greece has been shrinking since 2010, as repayments on older loans consistently outweighed new disbursements. This trend, fueled by the country’s long financial crisis, has only recently begun to reverse.
Figures from May to July 2025 show a strong rebound: new mortgage contracts reached €580 million, compared to €351 million in the same period of 2024, marking a 40% increase. Over the first seven months of 2025, new disbursements totaled €1.06 billion, up 32% year-on-year — the first time since 2014 that lending surpassed €1 billion in that period.
Bank executives stress that while this growth is encouraging, it is not yet enough to return portfolios to sustained expansion. They estimate that annual new lending needs to exceed €2 billion to achieve long-term stability.
Why Banks Target Borrowers in their 40s and 50s
Financial institutions are now focusing on customers in their 40s and 50s, a demographic considered more creditworthy than younger applicants. These borrowers typically have higher incomes, stable employment, and several decades before the upper lending age limit of 75. Many also did not take out mortgages during the post-2010 crisis, making them attractive new clients.
Upcoming tax reforms, including reductions for families with children, are expected to further boost their borrowing capacity.
New Mortgage Offers
To capture this segment, banks have introduced special mortgage packages with low fixed rates, some starting as low as 2.5% for the first three years. Certain products also allow borrowers to lock in monthly installments for up to 30 years, regardless of European Central Bank rate changes, at an average annual cost of around 4%.
Unlike previous state-supported programs such as “My Home II,” these new products come without restrictions on the age of the property being financed, making them more flexible for buyers.
If current growth continues, banks estimate that new mortgage lending in 2025 could approach €1.8 billion — slightly below their expectations but still the strongest performance in over a decade.
Source: tovima.com
