2026 Outlook –Institutional Readiness
- Lidis Private Equity Team
- 4 days ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
By Dennis Lidis Founder & CEO | Lidis Property Partners (LPP)
During 2024–2025, Greece re-established its capacity to attract capital and tourism at scale. In 2026, attention shifts to whether that momentum can be converted into outcomes that meet institutional requirements for durability and risk.
For investors, lenders, and senior professionals, the emphasis has narrowed to execution, consistency of delivery, clarity of underwriting, and adherence to institutional standards.
Capital allocation across Europe is becoming increasingly selective, and city-level liquidity remains decisive. In PwC/ULI’s Emerging Trends in Real Estate®: Europe 2026, Athens ranks 26th out of 32 European cities for investment prospects, declining from 22nd the prior year.
This positioning reflects how global capital currently underwrites Athens: a growth market (rather than a developed market) supported by tourism demand and urban housing fundamentals, but without the liquidity depth of core European cities. Under these conditions, opportunity persists, but outcomes are materially shaped by execution quality and platform capability.
In this environment, platforms that operate to institutional standards defined by governance, transparency, and repeatable execution are structurally advantaged in accessing high-quality financing and long-duration capital.
Our base case for 2026 assumes a more predictable interest-rate environment. Predictability matters because it restores underwriting confidence and supports liquidity.
This assumption is supported by ECB projections published in December 2025, which indicate inflation moderating below 2% through 2026–2027, reinforcing a more stable framework for long horizon investment decision making across Europe.
Greece: Tourism remains the growth engine — but the real prize is productivity
We expect 2026 to be another strong year for Greek tourism, extending the momentum established in 2025. At a strategic level, national policy continues to target a material expansion of tourism receipts through 2030, driven by higher arrivals, increased per-visitor spend, and gradual season extension. This trajectory supports sustained investment across infrastructure, hospitality, and urban regeneration.
We expect value growth in 2026 to be selective rather than market wide, with pricing stabilisation becoming the dominant dynamic outside a limited number of segments. Athens should remain the core liquidity market, though performance dispersion is likely to widen as capital becomes increasingly discriminating.
Bank of Greece data through 2024–2025 confirms this shift. Prices continue to advance, but the moderation from peak growth rates signals a transition toward execution-driven outcomes rather than cyclical repricing.
In segments that meet institutional thresholds, modest yield compression remains plausible. Further yield compression remains plausible as Greek bank lending terms continue to normalize, reflecting improved financing efficiency rather than diminished asset-level risk.
Hospitality and Urban Accommodation: Rising Competition
Competitive intensity across Athens and the major Greek destinations continues to increase. Guests are better informed, distribution has matured, and service consistency is now an explicit pricing variable.
Under these conditions, performance is determined by operating capability. Location remains a prerequisite, but outcomes are driven by the ability to sustain rate discipline through cycles, deliver consistent guest experience, steward assets professionally over time, and manage costs without eroding product quality.
This reflects the direction of global capital allocation within operating-intensive sectors, where platform quality and execution depth increasingly determine returns.
AI adoption is moving decisively from experimentation to operating standard. Recent research by PwC and the Urban Land Institute indicates that 75% of real estate participants now use AI or machine-learning tools, up from 51% the prior year.
The significance lies not in technology adoption itself, but in what it enables. Real estate is becoming increasingly data-native, with productivity, decision speed, and consistency emerging as central performance drivers, particularly in operating intensive sectors such as hospitality and urban accommodation.
Greece: Structural Constraints on Capital Liquidity
Greece continues to impose an execution premium, reflected in extended timelines, procedural friction, and high management intensity.
Capital liquidity remains a persistent structural constraint in the Greek investment environment, with disposition timelines materially longer than those observed in peer Eurozone markets. Recent analysis by Goldman Sachs places Greece among the weakest performers in the region on investment exit timelines, reflecting systemic inefficiencies across legal, judicial, and administrative frameworks.
This risk is not theoretical. In 2025, asset dispositions and corporate actions were delayed well beyond reasonable expectations, despite clean structures, credible counterparties, and clear economic rationale.
The consequence is structural: capital velocity slows as equity remains trapped, realised IRRs compress even where asset values appreciate, and risk-adjusted returns deteriorate as time uncertainty becomes a central underwriting variable.
At the same time, delayed exits constrain capital recycling, compounding opportunity cost and reducing portfolio flexibility.
More concerning is that these delays are embedded within the operating behaviour of legal and administrative gatekeepers, reflecting process-heavy decision-making, high-risk aversion, and weak alignment with international market standards.
We do not assume near-term improvement. In the absence of material reform, current exit dynamics are likely to remain in place, resulting in:
1. Reduced capital velocity, as equity remains locked for longer periods.
2. Weaker domestic wealth formation, driven by constrained capital recycling.
3. Lower institutional participation, widening the gap between Greece and peer markets in capital market depth.
This is a primary reason Greece continues to trade at a discount driven by exit certainty rather than asset quality. Market risk can be underwritten; time risk is materially more difficult for investors to price.
Execution Is the Asset
Lidis Property Partners has been shaped by the realities of the Greek market. Across cycles, one conclusion has remained consistent: outcomes are rarely determined by assets alone. They are determined by execution, by the ability to operate through friction, absorb complexity internally, and deliver reliably where systems are imperfect and timelines are extended.
That understanding defines how the firm is structured.
Across real estate, hospitality, and urban accommodation, LPP operates with an explicit institutional orientation. Governance, transparency, and repeatable execution are embedded at the platform level, with decisions taken to prioritize durability over transaction-specific optimisation.
In a market where dispersion of outcomes is wide, institutional partners increasingly distinguish between asset exposure and platform risk.
Capital favours teams that demonstrate control over execution, cost, and time. LPP has been built in that context.
Greece doesn’t lack opportunity. It lacks reliability—especially on time. And in real estate, time is not a detail; it is the core of the deal. In 2026, LPP will keep doing the unglamorous work exceptionally well: deliver cleanly, operate professionally, report transparently, and control variance when the system slows.
Investors approaching Greece are ultimately underwriting execution capability, not just the underlying asset.
We intend to be the team institutions can underwrite—because execution is the asset. We have operated through similar macro environments before, and we expect 2026 to be a year of strategic growth.
LPP enters the year with a strong team, a focused pipeline of acquisitions, and a disciplined program of disposals. We remain long on hospitality and urban accommodation assets, short on retail, and opportunistic on large developments.
Our focus in 2026 is disciplined continuity, measured through consistency of delivery and compounding credibility across stakeholders.
Institutional readiness in Greece is tested continuously, under delay and across cycles. LPP is structured for that test. The period ahead will serve as a further measure of our ability to deliver within it.
