Living in Switzerland / Investing in Greece

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Living in Switzerland / Investing in Greece

Pantelis Papamanolis
Member since 2023 路 3 posts 路 5 votes

Hello everyone!

It's been a while since I was so excited with something 馃槉. My name is Pantelis and I'm 34 years old. I grew up in Greece and have been living in Switzerland for the last 10 years.

I've been investing in stocks/bonds/ETFs for almost 5 years now and I've made the big decision together with my wife to focus on real estate investing and start from Greece. 

I'm so excited to find this forum. I read immediately "The book on rental property investing" by Brandon Turner and "Long Distance real estate investing" by David Greene and tomorrow I'm having my first ever appointment with a real estate agent to "interview" them!

I don't know if there are other folks from Europe and even more who are investing in Greece, but if yes, let's connect please!

I'm hoping to become an active member of this community, learn from people here, and hopefully in the future share also my learnings!

Wishing you all a happy new year and looking forward to meeting as many of you as possible!

Cheers,

Pantelis

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  • Mike LambertPro Member
    Investor 路 The Americas and Europe 路 Member since 2016 路 1k+ posts 路 1k+ votes
    2y

    Hello Pantelis,

    Welcome to the community! I don't want to temper your excitement but, while there are a few of us investing internationally, BiggerPockets is mostly US centric. It's great to read the books you mentioned that cover the basics but bear in mind that investing in different countries can be very different and you cannot blindly apply a US recipe on Greek real estate. There is still lots of great and useful stuff in there though.

    Of course, the fact that you're Greek will be hugely helpful, especially when it comes down to all the cultural aspects.

    On another note, I love Greece but, if I was forced to choose between the two, I'd personally rather own property in Switzerland than in Greece. Of course, the price point is different and that's an understatement.

    Good luck!

    0Reply
  • Sandhya Gupta
    Member since 2015 路 2 posts 路 1 vote
    2y

    @Mike Lambert Happy new year! What countries are you investing outside of US? Would you be able to share a similar forum like bigger pockets and/or your list of preferred countries based on the convenience of investing?

    0Reply
  • Mike LambertPro Member
    Investor 路 The Americas and Europe 路 Member since 2016 路 1k+ posts 路 1k+ votes
    2y

    @Sandhya Gupta Thank you and happy new year to you too.

    I doubt there exists a similar forum of any substance overseas. Few countries have a real estate investing culture as the US or Canada have (which is an opportunity for those in the know).

    I'm not sure what you mean by convenience of investing you mean and, generally, like in the US, the more convenient, the lower the return. You can go around that and get the best of both worlds by dealing with the right people, which will help you get the convenience and the returns.

    As to the best places to invest, it'd depend on your personal objectives, which I imagine you might not want to share in a forum. In that case, feel free to share them with me through a DM (direct message) so that I can reply accordingly.

    Hope this helps!
     

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  • Pantelis Papamanolis
    OP
    Member since 2023 路 3 posts 路 5 votes
    2y

    @Mike Lambert thank you so much for the welcome and the response and Happy New Year!
    I fully agree with all your points! I've done my own due dilligence and I've created my own models that take into consideration all income / expenses applying to Greece!
    What's interesting and maybe a bit demotivating is that for long term renting the numbers are way inferior to the numbers I'm seeing here in the forum and unless I'm missing some critical info, in Greece you can barely cover the mortgage expenses, while taking into consideration repairs/CapEx/Insurance etc.. The resulting CoCROI is maximum 1%.
    What's also interesting is that at the moment Greece has some of the highest ROIs in real estate in whole Europe, which means that the situation in other countries is even worst.
    In the next couple of days I'll meet with an accountant and a few more real estate agents to do a sanity check on my calculations / assumptions and pick their brains.
    Once I have updates I'll share them here! If you have any inputs, they are very welcome! 
    Lastly, to your point on focusing in Switzerland, there are quite a few reasons why I'm avoiding it for now, but the most important is my familiarity with Greece, the language (I don't speak well enough any of the Swiss languages) and the easiness to communicate.
    My ideal long-term plan is once I set up a good income from Greece to keep expanding also in Switzerland! 

    1Reply
  • Mike LambertPro Member
    Investor 路 The Americas and Europe 路 Member since 2016 路 1k+ posts 路 1k+ votes
    2y

    @Pantelis Papamanolis

    You're welcome and Happy New Year to you too.

    What you're saying about covering the mortgage expenses make sense. Mind you, that's the case with most of Canada and probably the US as well. A lot of the figures you see in the forum wouldn't work today because of the high interest rates and, when they'd still do, it'd be manly in markets where the potential capital appreciation countries.

    I invest in Europe but in short-term rentals. This is a total different story as the differential between short- and long-term rental income is much larger than in the US. For this to work best, you'd need to be in a tourism hotspot and Greece isn't one of them. I think there are better countries for that strategy but, given your knowledge of Greece, you might as well do it there, assuming that it's legal of course.

    0Reply
  • Pantelis Papamanolis
    OP
    Member since 2023 路 3 posts 路 5 votes
    2y

    @Mike Lambert apologies for the slow response.
    I'll keep updating my progress here for people interested.
    As mentioned above, with a downpayment of 20% and by receiving the rent the expenses (mortgage, tax, capex, repairs, vacancy, insurance, property management) are marginally covered, leaving no room for cashflow. This seems to be for a few reasons:

    - Increased rates

    - Golden visas in Greece

    - Continuously increasing popularity of short term investing

    Many people instead are purchasing properties with cash and are receiving 4-5% returns, however, that's something that I'm not interested in and doesn't allow scaling.

    At that point, I've concluded that the two most profitable options would be house flipping and short term investing, as you very well suggested.

    That said, I'd like to ask you two questions please:

    - At the moment, what is the gross margin in a good area in the US? In case of mortgage with 20% downpayment and by renting the property, what could be the net return rate?

    - Where in Europe are you currently investing on? Could you share also the approximate net return rates there?

    Thank you again for the great info! 

    1Reply
  • Mike LambertPro Member
    Investor 路 The Americas and Europe 路 Member since 2016 路 1k+ posts 路 1k+ votes
    2y

    @Pantelis Papamanolis

    To answer your questions:

    1. When it comes to the US, I'll let American members answer that question as they know better since I'm Canadian. I know that it's all over the place and it depends on what you call a good area so I'm not sure it'd be that easy for them to answer.

    2. When it comes to Europe, I'm focusing on the Iberian peninsula (that's Spain and Portugal) for short-term rentals. I don't mind sharing my figures if you really want to see them but it would be counter-productive as they're not reflective of the market. This is because I'm buying with investors and I bring value to them by ensuring that, if they invest with me, they make more money than if they were investing by themselves while having little to do and little worries. That's a tall order and that forces me to find off-market deals that are significantly better than what you can find on the market. Therefore, if you want to invest in short-term rentals, you should use a tool like Airdna to get accurate estinmates.

    Hope this helps!

    0Reply
  • Mike LambertPro Member
    Investor 路 The Americas and Europe 路 Member since 2016 路 1k+ posts 路 1k+ votes
    2y

    @Pantelis Papamanolis

    I had an afterthought about my previous reply to you. When deciding where you want to invest and in what kind of properties, you might want to think where you have or can create an edge. For example, our market occupancy rate is supposed to be around 50 - 55%, which is given that it's a seasonal market. We should be rented the whole summer and have some occupancy in the shoulder seasons but occupancy in the winter, although higher than before the pandemic, remains low and most properties are sitting empty. Because we have a "secret sauce", my investors and I enjoy a 90% occupancy this low season - winter (which by the way is why I mentioned before that our net returns would be highly misleading for you because they're so much higher than what others are getting).

    I understand you're new to the game but you can still create your own secret sauce. You're Greek, you might speak Greek and have family and connections in Greece, know the culture. While not as good as Spain or Portugal, Greece shares some similar characteristics like the low property prices and big tourism industry so it could still be a good market for short-term rentals. Then you live in Switzerland, which has lots of wealthy people and expensive properties. Do you see where I'm going?

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