Greek Households Spent 8.3% More on Housing in 2025, Taking 14.7% of the Budget
Housing took 14.7% of Greek household spending in 2025, at €268.12 a month, an 8.3% rise that outpaced food and pushed the poorest fifth to 22.3%.
Greek households spent an average of €268.12 a month on housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels in 2025, up from €247.51 in 2024. That is an increase of 8.3% in a single year, and it lifted housing from 14.4% to 14.7% of the total household budget. Food and non-alcoholic beverages, still the largest single group at €371.20 a month, rose by only 4.1% and actually slipped as a share of spending, from 20.7% to 20.4%. Total household expenditure came to €21,842.40 for the year, against €20,694.48 in 2024. The figures are from the Household Budget Survey for 2025, published in Piraeus on 25 September 2026 by the national statistical authority, with a final sample of 5,540 households.
The burden is not spread evenly
The national average hides the part that matters for anyone looking at Greek residential property. Households in the poorest fifth of the distribution put 22.3% of their spending into housing. Households in the richest fifth put in 11.8%. The gap is more than ten percentage points, and it is the clearest signal in the release about where rent and utility increases actually land.
Tenure sharpens it further. Households living in a rented dwelling spent on average 23.4% of their total monthly expenditure on housing, and 17.3% of the whole budget went on the rent itself. For a country where the ownership rate has traditionally been high, that is a large share concentrated in a minority of households, and it is the group most exposed to any further move in asking rents.
Why an expenditure survey matters to a property investor
A budget survey is not a price index and does not tell you what a square metre costs. What it does tell you is how much room is left in the tenant's wallet, which is the ceiling on future rent growth in any market that is not being carried by foreign demand. When the housing group grows twice as fast as food in the same year, and when the bottom quintile is already at 22.3%, the domestic tenant base has limited capacity to absorb another step up.
It is worth being precise about what the 8.3% covers. The group includes water, electricity, gas and other fuels alongside the dwelling cost itself, so energy prices feed into it directly. The release does not break the 8.3% down between rent and utilities, and we are not going to estimate that split.
What our own Greek numbers show
Glopra's Greece row, dated 22 September 2026, puts the national asking price at $3,221 per square metre and the national asking rent at $12.42 per square metre per month, both from the same listings publisher for the same month, giving a gross rental yield of roughly 4.6%. The twelve-month asking-price trend is +5.7% in euro terms and +2.8% in dollars; prices are up 54.5% over five years and 87.7% over ten. Our bubble score of 74 puts Greece in the elevated band. Transaction costs come to 12.1% of the purchase price, the standardised non-resident effective tax on rental income is 18.07% within a 14.25% to 21.89% range, and ownership is freehold, with approval required for non-EU buyers in border zones.
For Athens itself our city row shows $3,278 per square metre and $14.50 per square metre per month, a gross yield of about 5.3%, with the same elevated bubble score of 74 and a twelve-month trend of +5.2%. The two rows are separate geographies and are not ranked against each other.
Put side by side, the two datasets describe the same squeeze from opposite ends. Our asking rents are rising in a market where prices have nearly doubled in a decade; the budget survey shows the share of the domestic household budget that housing now absorbs, and how much heavier that share is at the bottom of the income distribution. Neither number is a recommendation, and the survey measures spending in 2025, one year behind our September 2026 listings snapshot.
Sources: Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT), Household Budget Survey 2025, Piraeus, 25 September 2026 https://www.statistics.gr/documents/20181/8336b3c7-34b6-d95b-b9bf-a528c52be616