Selling a Greek Property: The Capital Gains Suspension and What US Owners Still Owe

Greece's 15% capital gains tax exists on paper only

Greece legislated a 15% tax on the gain an individual makes when selling real estate, then suspended it before it ever took practical effect. The suspension has been renewed every year since, and the current extension runs to the end of 2026. There is no decision yet for 2027, and Greek tax practitioners generally expect another extension rather than a sudden switch-on, but each renewal is its own legislative act rather than an automatic rollover.

Two things follow from that. First, if you sell a Greek holiday home in the current window as a private individual, you should not expect a Greek capital gains bill on the profit. Second, that is a policy position and not a structural feature of Greek law, so it is worth confirming the rule that applies in the year you actually sign rather than the year you buy.

There is also a boundary worth knowing about. The suspension covers private disposals. Greek tax authorities can treat a pattern of buying and reselling as a business activity based on factors such as frequency, speed of resale and evident profit intent, which moves the profit into ordinary income tax territory instead. A single holiday home held for years is not what that rule is aimed at, but a buy-renovate-flip plan deserves a conversation with a Greek tax advisor before you start rather than after.

What a seller actually pays in Greece

The headline transfer tax on a Greek purchase is a buyer cost, not a seller cost, so the exit side of the transaction is lighter than the entry side. What a seller does typically carry is the professional and compliance layer: legal fees, an engineer's fees for the technical certification described below, any agency commission agreed, and the cost of bringing outstanding property tax and any unpermitted building work into order before a notary will proceed.

That last item is the one that has real financial weight. Clearing a legalisation issue or settling arrears is not a formality that gets waved through at signing, and it can delay a sale by months if it surfaces late. Sellers who discover it at the point of sale are usually discovering something that was already true on the day they bought.

The documents that hold a Greek sale together

Greece has moved steadily toward a digital, notary-centred transfer process, and Law 5293/2026 confirmed that direction by making the notary the coordinating point of the transfer, able to pull much of the required documentation directly from public authorities through interoperable systems. That reduces legwork, but it does not reduce the underlying requirements.

The critical one is the Electronic Building Identity, the Ηλεκτρονική Ταυτότητα Κτιρίου, mandatory for every property transfer since April 2022. A civil engineer compiles it, and it confirms the property matches its permits and carries no unauthorised construction. Without it there is no transfer. Alongside it sit the ENFIA certificate, confirming the property was declared and the annual tax paid for the preceding five years, and the seller's tax clearance certificate confirming no outstanding debts to the Greek tax office. Both are now issued digitally.

For a non-resident owner, all of this runs through a Greek tax number and, in practice, a Greek lawyer holding power of attorney. It is the same infrastructure you set up as a buyer, which is a reason to keep it alive rather than let it lapse once the purchase completes.

The US side does not follow Greece's suspension

This is the part that surprises people. The United States taxes its citizens and residents on worldwide capital gains, wherever the asset sits and whoever else does or does not tax it. A sale of Greek property gets reported on Form 8949 and Schedule D like any other capital asset disposal.

The usual relief valve for a cross-border sale is the foreign tax credit on Form 1116, which offsets US tax with foreign tax actually paid. That is precisely where Greece's suspension works against you: a credit needs a foreign tax to credit, and a Greek charge of zero leaves nothing to offset. The result is that the gain lands under US rules in full, with no foreign tax reducing it. An owner who paid a real Greek capital gains tax would very often owe little or nothing at home. An owner who paid none may owe the whole thing.

The main-home exclusion, up to 250,000 dollars of gain for a single filer and 500,000 dollars for certain joint filers, is available for foreign property, but only where the property genuinely qualified as your principal residence under the usual ownership and use tests. A Greek property used for holidays and occasional letting typically does not qualify, so it is not a plan you should assume into a purchase decision. Long-term gains are also taxed at more favourable rates than short-term ones, which makes holding period relevant. Your own rate, and whether the net investment income tax touches the gain, depend on your wider tax position, so treat this as the shape of the problem rather than a calculation.

Currency turns a euro gain into a different dollar gain

Your US gain is computed in dollars, not euros. The cost basis converts at the rate on the purchase date and the proceeds convert at the rate on the sale date, using a consistent and reasonable method. That mechanical detail has been doing real work lately.

The dollar weakened sharply against the euro during 2025, moving from roughly 1.04 to around 1.18 by the end of the year. For a US owner who bought before that shift, an unchanged euro price at sale still translates into materially more dollars, and the difference is a taxable gain in the eyes of the IRS even though the property itself did not appreciate in euro terms. The reverse is equally true. A strengthening dollar can shrink or erase a real euro profit on the US return.

The practical consequence for a buyer today is that the exchange rate on your purchase date is a number worth recording carefully and keeping, along with proof of what you paid and what you spent on qualifying improvements. Basis records assembled years after the fact are the single most common gap when a foreign property sale finally gets reported.

Why any of this matters while you are still buying

Exit costs shape entry decisions more than most buyers expect. If a Greek purchase is partly an investment, the number that matters is the after-tax return in dollars, and that is a different number from the euro price appreciation you see quoted in market reports. The gap between those two figures is made up of currency movement, the absence of a Greek credit to offset US tax, and the compliance work needed to make the property sellable at all.

None of that argues against buying. It argues for buying with clean documentation from day one: a properly certified building file, ENFIA declared and paid from the first year, purchase-date exchange rates on record, and improvement receipts filed somewhere you will still find them in a decade. Those are cheap to maintain and expensive to reconstruct.

If you are structuring a mortgage as part of the purchase, it is also worth being clear about how the loan interacts with the exit. Repaying a euro mortgage from euro sale proceeds keeps the currency exposure on the equity portion only, which is a different risk profile from buying outright in dollars, and that is a question worth putting to a specialist alongside the non-resident mortgage terms themselves.

Questions US buyers ask

Continue your Greek property research

• ENFIA Explained, Plus FBAR and FATCA for US Owners
• Additional Costs When Buying Property in Greece
• Greece's New Short-Term Rental Rules for US Owners