Selling a property in Thessaloniki: the process step by step.

Before the listing goes out, you gather the file. The checklist: title deed and manner of acquisition; energy performance certificate; topographic diagram, where one exists; engineer’s certificate on the legality of the structures and any settlements; Land Registry details, that is the National Cadastre Code Number (KAEK) and an extract of the cadastral diagram; the ENFIA property tax certificate. If the property is in an apartment building, the regulation with the ownership shares is needed too. The list is indicative and not legal advice: what exactly is required in your case is determined by the notary and the engineer of the transaction. Its value is time. A file that starts together with the listing, and not after the offer, reduces the risk of the worst version: the buyer is found and waits.

Delays rarely come from the buyer. They usually come from three points of the file. The first is legality: an enclosed semi-open space, a change of use, an attic that does not appear on the permit. They need an engineer and time, and that time usually starts counting after a buyer has been found — unless the process starts earlier. The second is inheritance. If the property came to you by inheritance, the relevant deeds and registrations must have been completed in your name before signing. The third is the Land Registry. Wrong square metres, wrong boundaries or declaration of the property by another person are not rare cases; they are corrected, but the correction has a time of its own. None of the three is usually insurmountable. They are tasks with a start date. The earlier they start, the less they press the timetable.

Negotiation corrects little. The initial price weighs more. The reason is practical: the first period after publication is also the one that gathers the most attention. That is when the people already searching actively see it. If the price is off the market, that audience usually passes by and rarely returns. What follows is reductions, and every reduction gives the buyer a reason to wait for the next one. That is why the price is calculated rather than estimated roughly. Comparable properties in the same area, condition, floor, orientation, what of these the buyer actually pays for and what they do not. In the site’s tools you will find the valuation calculator, which gives a first indication from market data. It is a starting point and not a conclusion: the number locks after someone sees the property from the inside.

Promotion is not only posting on listing websites. It is also who sees the property before it gets there. The property is promoted through the newdeal network, so colleagues in the network learn about it too. The second level is LeadingRE, a network of companies in more than 70 countries, with more than 550 member companies and around 4,700 offices. It counts when the likely buyer is not in Thessaloniki: Greeks living abroad, investors from abroad, people relocating. Not every property addresses a buyer from abroad. What is useful is something else: before the listing goes out, the likely buyer is defined and the promotion is set up for them — Eastern Thessaloniki and the centre, 14 areas of activity.

The order is fixed. First a meeting at the property and a record of what is missing from the file, so that the notary and the engineer can take it on. Then the calculation of the price, with the numbers in front of you, not with a verbal estimate. Next the assignment, where what is undertaken and for how long is written down explicitly. Then the promotion, the viewings and the updates: what interest there was, from which audience, what was said about the price. In the negotiation the work resembles financial analysis: what the buyer can bear, what is left to you net from each offer, what waiting for the next one costs. “I do not promise results. I deliver them — and when something goes wrong, I stay at the table until it is solved.” That is also why the assignment is discussed with dates rather than with promises.