The LPP viewpoint

By Dennis Lidis – Chief Executive

Athens City Viewpoint at Night, Credits Alexandros Maragos

Greek real estate is still investable, but it is no longer forgiving. Public REIT disclosures increasingly read like active development and asset-recycling stories, while inflation, labour pressure and geopolitical spillovers continue to squeeze delivery, margins and timing.

In a market where capital is plentiful and narratives travel fast, advantage rarely comes from seeing the obvious. It comes from underwriting what others ignore, resisting what others crowd into, and having the operating depth to hold conviction when the environment turns less forgiving.

That environment is already here. Greece still has momentum. Athens International Airport handled roughly 34 million passengers in 2025, up 6.7% year on year, and the first two months of 2026 were already running 10.8% above the same period of 2025. Tourism remains a major national growth engine and that continues to attract capital. But strong demand can hide a great deal of bad underwriting, especially late in a cycle.

The next phase of Greek real estate will reward basis, patience, liquidity, disciplined pacing of capital and genuine operating control.

The public narrative still treats Greek listed REITs as if they are primarily passive income vehicles. Their own disclosures tell a harder story. Prodea has leaned into a mix of rental income, hospitality income, selective disposals and inventory-property sales, while simultaneously repositioning and recycling capital. Trastor has committed meaningful capital to construction and redevelopment and explicitly presents development projects outside parts of its pure yield framing. Noval openly describes an exceptional captive pipeline of development projects. BriQ continues to upgrade, expand and construct. Trade Estates is still building logistics and retail park product. None of this is a criticism. It is simply reality: much of listed Greek real estate today looks less like passive rent collection and more like active execution risk, wearing a REIT skin.

Figure 1. A strong demand backdrop can conceal late-cycle underwriting risk.

That distinction matters because the operating backdrop is no longer easy. The Bank of Greece continues to frame the main risks to growth on the downside, including a worsening geopolitical situation, rising uncertainty and stronger protectionism. Inflation has moderated from crisis peaks, but it has not disappeared where operators actually feel it. Services inflation remains sticky, and the Greek harmonised inflation rate in February 2026 was still running above the euro area. In practice that means labour, outsourced services, utilities, maintenance and hospitality-linked cost lines are still not behaving like a benign market.

War and geopolitical instability do not need to be physically close to Greece to affect Greek assets. They transmit through energy uncertainty, insurance, procurement friction, shipping volatility, labour expectations and financing sentiment. That makes real estate planning more difficult precisely where poor underwriting tends to look weakest: delivery timing, replacement cost, contingency, leasing assumptions and exit confidence. It also means that narratives built on clean stabilisation paths deserve more skepticism than they received a few years ago.

Construction is where this becomes brutal. Greece has seen a sharp rise in construction costs since 2020, while labour availability has become one of the sector’s clearest bottlenecks. When labour is short and pricing remains elevated, delays stop being an inconvenience and become a direct hit to margin, credibility and return timing. This is especially dangerous for groups that presell early, publish attractive spreads and then discover that delivery economics keep moving underneath them. In that environment, a development margin that looked comfortable in committee can disappear surprisingly quickly in the field.

Figure 2. Selected pressure indicators affecting operators and developers.

This is why the next phase of Greek real estate will reward a different skill set. Not enthusiasm. Not access to a broker list. Not comfort with fashionable themes. It will reward basis, patience, liquidity, disciplined pacing of capital and genuine operating control.

Investors who can hold pricing discipline, protect downside, challenge soft assumptions and tolerate complexity will have a meaningful advantage over those who simply arrived in time for the broader rerating.

This also explains why the market has become more dangerous for the less experienced operator. Some foreign entrants and some local players are already discovering that Greece looks easier in a presentation than it feels in execution.

The listed market itself offers a warning: the line between landlord, developer, asset recycler and operator has blurred. That creates opportunity for capable platforms, but it also increases the penalty for sloppy underwriting. When a vehicle is priced as a stable income story but behaves operationally like a development business, mistakes are punished faster and more visibly.

None of this means capital should retreat from Greece. It means capital should grow up. Broad optimism is no longer enough. The key question is not whether Greece still works; it is whether a specific asset, capital structure and management team can still work when construction remains unforgiving, operating pressure persists and the macro narrative is no longer doing as much of the heavy lifting.

The next phase of Greek real estate will not punish everyone equally. But it will punish many. It will punish the less experienced operators first - and in truth that process has already begun, with both foreign and local participants finding this market far less forgiving than the headlines suggest. It will punish overpayment, weak underwriting, and development models that look attractive on paper but crack under inflation, delay, and rising delivery costs. It will punish those who sell too early, promise too much, and discover too late that margin is thinner than the brochure implied.

At LPP our first two asset exits have achieved 4x and 3x capital multiples respectively, with capital redeployed into higher-value opportunities. In a market that is becoming less forgiving, that discipline in exiting and reallocating capital matters as much as discipline in buying.

That is where the real opening begins. Not in the crowded trade, but in strategy clarity and where complexity, discipline and execution matter more than enthusiasm. The best opportunities now are in places many cannot reach, and others do not have the patience to pursue. This is no longer a market for passengers. It is a market for operators. It will punish those who confuse narrative with durability. And it will increasingly separate true operators from tourists.

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