Athens now requires 16 annual wages for a new 70 m² home, Deloitte finds

Athens remains among Europe’s hardest cities in which to buy a newly built home relative to local pay. The Deloitte Property Index 2026 places the Greek capital third in its city affordability ranking: the price of a standard 70-square-metre new apartment equals roughly 16.0 average gross annual salaries. The comparison was reported in Greece on 15 October, after the research was released earlier in the week.

The two cities above Athens are Vlora in Albania, at 21.3 annual wages, and Prague in the Czech Republic, at 16.9. The index covers 25 European countries. Deloitte says the number of surveyed cities where the benchmark apartment costs more than ten annual salaries rose from 11 to 19 compared with the previous edition. This is a measure of the relationship between purchase prices and local earnings, not a prediction of how long an individual household will need to save.

For a Greek buyer, the ratio highlights the importance of household income, deposit size and financing conditions alongside the advertised apartment price. It does not include a personal mortgage rate, transfer costs or a household’s actual spending. A household with two earners may have a different budget from the one-person salary benchmark; the figure cannot be applied directly to an individual purchase.

For investors, high prices relative to wages can constrain local owner-occupier demand, but they do not automatically imply stronger rental yields. Rental income, vacancies, taxes and operating expenses must be assessed separately. Nor does the ranking show that every Athens neighbourhood is equally expensive: building age, access to transport, size and location remain decisive.

The underlying comparison belongs to the 2026 edition of the study and principally reflects the 2025 market. Buyers should therefore treat the ranking as a structural affordability indicator rather than a live quotation for an apartment available today.