In the last 18 months, OSEOS has screened more than 120 assets across Greece.

Fewer than 8% met our criteria.

That number is not a marketing line. It is the output of a process, and understanding what that process actually looks like is, we think, one of the most useful things we can share with investors evaluating not just property, but the people they choose to work with.

What “Screening” Actually Means

The Greek property market offers no shortage of listings. Platforms, brokers, developers, and private sellers generate a constant flow of assets: new builds, conversion opportunities, distressed commercial properties, inheritance disposals, hotel-to-residential candidates, and everything in between.

Most of what reaches us never advances past an initial desk review. A significant proportion fails at the first filter: legal title.

Greece has a well-documented title complexity problem. Properties with unresolved inheritance disputes, unlicensed structural additions, outstanding tax liabilities, encumbrances registered in pre-digital land registries, and incomplete building permits are not rare edge cases. They are a meaningful percentage of the available market. We do not advance an asset with an unresolved title issue, regardless of how attractive the location or price appears on the surface.

What gets screened out, and why:

Title issues: incomplete registration, unresolved co-ownership, registered mortgages or pledges, pending legal disputes. Immediate disqualifications, no exceptions.

Planning and permit problems: unauthorized additions, missing occupancy certificates, buildings registered under outdated zoning classifications that conflict with intended use. Greece’s building stock carries significant illegal construction from the 1980s through the 2000s. Properties with unresolved planning status cannot be developed, rented short-term, or sold cleanly to future buyers.

Structural assessments: we commission independent structural evaluations on every asset that advances past the title stage. Buildings with significant concrete carbonation, reinforcement corrosion, or subsidence that would require investment beyond the economics of the project do not proceed.

Commercial logic: a property can have clean title and good bones and still fail. If the unit mix, price-per-square-metre at exit, or target buyer profile does not align with where demand is actually heading in that neighbourhood, we pass.

Neighbourhood trajectory: our sourcing is forward-looking. We are not interested in areas already repriced by speculation. We look for locations where infrastructure investment, demographic shift, or proximity to established demand is not yet reflected in the asking price.

Case Study One: The Coastal Asset We Walked Away From After Agreeing a Price

This is a case study we share because it illustrates something that does not appear in any developer’s brochure: what happens when due diligence uncovers a problem after a deal has already been negotiated.

We identified a commercial property on the Greek coast: a substantial building with genuine development potential and strong location fundamentals. We ran initial numbers, the asset passed our preliminary filters, and we entered into negotiations with the seller. We agreed on a price. Heads of terms were in place.

Then we went to the urban planning authority (the local body responsible for zoning and building permits) to verify the change-of-use pathway from commercial to residential, which was central to the asset’s investment thesis.

The answer came back: no.

The building sits within 20 metres of the coastline. Under Greek coastal zone regulations, that proximity imposes a hard ceiling on residential conversion: no more than 20 residential units can be created in a building at that setback distance. The asset’s entire commercial logic (the unit count, the pricing, the yield) was built around a conversion that the law simply does not permit at that scale.

There was a second problem. The building’s original Άδεια Δόμησης (the building permit issued when it was first constructed) predated a series of regulatory changes that have since altered the requirements for new construction and significant renovation in coastal zones. Obtaining a new building permit (Άδεια Δόμησης) to reflect the proposed change of use would have required bringing the entire building into full compliance with current standards: fire safety, accessibility, energy performance, structural reinforcement. The cost of compliance, layered onto the agreed purchase price and the restricted unit ceiling, made the economics irrecoverable.

We withdrew from the deal.

The seller was disappointed. The asset was genuinely attractive in many respects: location, condition, price per square metre. But the development thesis was broken, and no amount of negotiation with the seller could change what the urban planning authority had confirmed in writing.

This is what due diligence actually looks like. Not a checklist signed off in an afternoon. A direct consultation with the planning authority, a specific question about the specific use we intended, and a willingness to walk away from a deal we had already spent time and money advancing, because the alternative was delivering a broken investment to a client.

Case Study Two: The Building We Paid More For, and Why

Walking away from the wrong deal is one side of the discipline. The other is being willing to pay properly for the right one.

Velar Living is one of our current projects, available now to our clients. The story of how we acquired it illustrates the other end of the screening process.

The building had been identified and tracked by an investor for over a year before we were involved. During that time, the investor worked through a lengthy process of technical and legal remediation: cleaning the title, resolving planning status, bringing the building to a point where it was genuinely transferable and developable without encumbrance. This kind of remediation work is unglamorous, slow, and expensive. Most buyers are not willing to undertake it. This investor did.

By the time the building was clean (legally sound, technically clear, ready to develop), we had been watching it. When the investor reached the finish line, we made an offer that gave him an immediate, meaningful profit on the work he had done. He sold. We paid above what a comparable unresolved building would have fetched on the open market.

We paid more because the risk had already been removed. We paid more because the work had already been done. And we paid more because acquiring a clean, ready-to-develop asset at a premium is a better outcome for our clients than acquiring a cheaper asset that requires another year of remediation before anything can be built or sold.

Velar Living is today a project we can offer with full confidence: title clean, permits in order, development ready. That confidence has a price. We believe it is the right price to pay.

A Note on Owner Pressure

Both case studies above reflect a dynamic that any active developer in this market encounters regularly: property owners who are convinced their building is suitable for a concept it cannot legally support.

We receive inquiries from owners who have a structurally sound, legally clean building, and who cannot understand why we will not proceed with a change-of-use conversion. The answer, almost always, comes down to the same set of factors: coastal setback restrictions, zoning classifications, ADEA compliance requirements, or unit-count ceilings that the owner has either not been made aware of or has chosen not to investigate.

A clean building is not the same as a building that is clean for our concept.

We have had this conversation many times. We will continue to have it. Our job is not to find a way to make every building work; it is to be honest with owners about what their building can and cannot become under current Greek planning law, and to move on when the answer is no.

Owners who have worked through that process with us, even when the outcome was a rejection, tend to understand the value of the conversation. The ones who find a developer willing to tell them what they want to hear tend to find out why that was the wrong choice later in the process.

What Passes

The assets that make it through share a set of characteristics refined through years of operating in this market:

Clean, unencumbered title with a verifiable chain of ownership. A structural profile that supports the development standard we hold every project to. A location we would defend in five years, not just today. A price-per-square-metre at acquisition that leaves genuine margin at exit, not a margin that exists only in the optimistic scenario. And a product that a real buyer would choose over what else exists in the market at that time.

Why the Rejection Rate Is the Point

Some developers present a broad pipeline as evidence of scale. We present a narrow pass rate as evidence of discipline.

The 8% figure is not something we arrived at by trying to be selective. It is the result of applying real criteria consistently, and discovering that most of what is available in any given market, at any given time, does not meet those criteria.

For investors, this matters in a specific way: when evaluating a developer to work with, the question is not only what they have built. It is what they chose not to build. A developer who advances every asset that comes through the door is not a development partner. They are a transaction facilitator.

A developer who advances every asset that comes through the door is not a development partner. They are a transaction facilitator.

We are structured as the former. The 8% is why.

What This Means in Practice for OSEOS Clients

Every asset that reaches our clients (whether as a ready-to-purchase unit, a Golden Visa-eligible opportunity, or an off-market investment) has already cleared a process that most properties in the market could not pass.

That does not mean zero risk. Real estate investment carries inherent risk, and we say so plainly. What it means is that the risks our clients are taking are known, assessed, and priced, not discovered after the reservation deposit has cleared.

Our process, in outline:

  1. Initial briefing: we understand the investor’s goals, capital structure, and timeline before we recommend anything
  2. Asset selection: we present only assets that have cleared our screening framework
  3. Legal due diligence: conducted by independent licensed Greek lawyers, not our own in-house counsel
  4. Structuring: aligned with the investor’s tax position, residency goals, and exit horizon
  5. Acquisition: transfer before a licensed Greek notary, every document in order
  6. Post-sale support: the relationship does not end at title transfer

The transfer of title is not the end. It is the beginning.

A Final Note on the Market in 2026

Athens is not a distressed market anymore. The recovery story is over; the market is now at record highs and still appreciating. That context changes what rigorous screening means.

In 2019, a disciplined buyer could find genuinely underpriced assets by simply moving faster than the market. That window has largely closed. In 2026, rigorous screening is less about finding a discount and more about avoiding assets that look correctly priced but carry risks (legal, structural, or locational) that are not visible in the listing.

That is precisely the environment in which the 8% rule earns its value. Not by finding the cheap deal. By avoiding the expensive mistake.

This article reflects OSEOS’s internal screening process and operational approach. The Velar Living acquisition details are shared with the knowledge of all parties involved. This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, a financial promotion, or an offer to buy or sell any investment product. Real estate investments carry risk, including the potential loss of capital. Prospective investors should seek independent legal, tax, and financial advice before making any investment decision.