Almost eight in ten say they are likely to buy, sell or rent a property in the next five years.
This results from a study by the Professional Chamber of Athens, for brokers, presented at a hybrid event today. The study on behalf of the E.E.A. prepared by IME GSEVEE.
The president of the Professional Chamber of Athens, Yiannis Chatzitheodosiou, said: "The research shows very interesting facts and one of them is that despite the challenges that exist, the demand for brokerage services remains strong. There are therefore significant opportunities for further development of the sector, which will significantly affect the entire Greek economy. After all, we are talking about a sector with particular dynamics with a dominant year in 2019 in terms of declared incomes and number of professionals.
When today 76% of respondents state that they are likely to buy, sell or rent a property within the next five years, we understand that the real estate profession is pivotal. Also, the data proves the strong interest in the market for the search for housing, which is already a problem for a large part of society.
The Athens Chamber of Commerce, in its effort to support its members in every way, has prepared a series of Studies that can essentially help various key sectors of the economy. Thus, after insurance mediators, driving schools, secondary education tutoring schools and foreign language centers as well as other sectors, brokers now also have an in-depth Study for their own professional area".
Main research results:
Real estate transactions primarily concern residences and, secondarily, commercial housing. 87% of the sample has made one or more real estate transactions.
77% consider it likely to make a real estate transaction in the next five years, 11% unlikely and 12% do not make any prediction. In the event of a future transaction, 51.9% will start their property search online, 24.2% through a real estate agency and 14.6% through relatives and friends.
76% of those who had a transaction related to renting a home (either as owners or as tenants) and 55% buying and selling a home. This is followed by the transactions for commercial housing, with 30% for renting and 10% for buying and selling. A significant percentage of transactions (26%) concerns the purchase and sale of plots of land and a minimal percentage (3%) concerns the rental of a plot of land.
52% of those who had a real estate transaction used brokerage services. 45% of those who used brokerage services made the transaction in the last 12 months.
The main reason for not contacting a broker is the processing of the transaction by the person himself (67.4%). 26.7% avoided brokerage, due to a lack of trust.
Brokerage services were mainly used for renting (56.3%) or buying/selling a house (54.4%), followed by buying and selling a plot of land (20.13%), renting a business premises (14.1%) ) and the purchase and sale of commercial housing (7.7%).
54% of those who used brokerage services turned to a broker from the beginning, while 45% did not.
Almost 50% of those who used a broker are very or fairly satisfied with the services they received.
64% consider the broker they worked with reliable or rather reliable, 20% maintain a neutral attitude and only 16% consider the broker they worked with unreliable or rather unreliable.
61.7% of respondents consider the broker they worked with to be very and fairly informed. Moderately informed considers that 24.6% of the respondents were, and much lower are the percentages of responses that find the broker little or not at all informed, i.e. only 12.8%.
Professionalism (62.7%), provision of reliable information (47.3%), knowledge of the market (43.9%) and experience (35.8%) emerge as the most important factors for choosing the most suitable broker. . The cost of the offered services (21.2%), recommendations from trusted persons (14.3%) and the flexibility – availability of the broker (12.8%) are also considered important, while reputation is rated low ( 5.4%) and the available reviews – evaluations of previous customers (3.9%).
As points that need improvement by the brokers, the greater accuracy of the information offered (52.7%), the more specialized knowledge (32.8%), the cost of the services provided (29.3%), the politeness and the professionalism (25.1%), transparency in fees (24.6%), flexibility to customer needs (24.2%), speed of service (22.3%) and increase in available properties (22, 1%).
51% of those who have used real estate services in the past are willing to recommend the realtor they worked with to third parties, compared to 26% who state that they are neither likely nor unlikely to provide recommendations and 22% who rule out such a possibility.
61.5% of those who have used brokerage services for a real estate transaction consider their contribution important, compared to 23.6% who consider it neither important nor insignificant and 13.7% who characterize it as insignificant.
The main sources of information for finding a suitable broker are the internet (74.5%) and recommendations from friends or family (53.7%), while advertisements (9%) and newspapers or periodicals (4.7%).
