3OCT

Greece freezes short-lets in second city

2 min read

13:31UTC

Greece barred new short-let registrations in Thessaloniki's historic core from 1 July, with fines from €20,000, extending its Athens containment model to a second city.

← Back to Spain's Congress sinks its rental decrees Jump to analysis ↓

SocietyDeveloping

Key takeaway

Greece freezes new short-let registrations in Thessaloniki's core to 31 December, extending its Athens model to a second city.

From 1 July, no new property in Thessaloniki's 1st Municipal Community, its historic and commercial core, may register for the first time in Greece's AMAD short-term-rental (STR) registry⁠¹. The freeze runs to 31 December. Any flat already registered there is struck off automatically if it changes hands by sale, gift or parental transfer; inheritance is exempt.

Penalties reach 50% of rental income, a minimum of €20,000, doubling to €40,000 on a repeat within the same tax year⁠². Greece abolished in-country nomad-visa switching under Law 5275/2026 in March and first pushed Athens-style limits into Thessaloniki as a licence-transfer ban that same month. This adds a fresh registration freeze on top, the first replication of the Athens-core model to a second city in this form.

Greece keeps tightening its short-let containment city by city, while Spain's national decree cannot clear its own coalition. The Mediterranean enforcement model matures through municipal ordinance that needs no confidence vote, where Spain's stalls one parliament up on distributional politics. Two governments, two speeds, one pressure.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

AMAD is Greece's national registry that any short-term rental, like an Airbnb-style flat, must join before it can legally be listed. From 1 July, no property in the historic centre of Thessaloniki, officially its '1st Municipal Community', can join AMAD for the first time until the end of the year. Flats already on the registry there lose their spot automatically if they are sold, gifted, or passed down within a family. Anyone who lists an unregistered property anyway faces a fine of half their rental income or €20,000, whichever is higher, doubling to €40,000 for a second offence in the same tax year.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Greece's Law 5275/2026 lets municipalities restrict short-term rentals by ordinance rather than requiring a national parliamentary vote, which is why Thessaloniki could move directly from a March licence-transfer ban to a July registration freeze without further legislation.

The structural condition is administrative, not political: any Greek municipality with AMAD-registered density concerns now has a standing legal route to freeze its own market segment by segment.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: Thessaloniki already tightened STR rules once this year: a licence-transfer ban in March 2026 stopped registered short-lets from passing to new owners without losing their registration. The July freeze extends that same municipal-ordinance mechanism from transfers to first-time registrations entirely, both drawing on Law 5275/2026's national legal basis for local restriction.

Counter-parallel: Barcelona chose a different tool for a similar problem, a citywide sunset on all tourist-apartment licences by 2028 rather than a targeted, time-limited freeze on new entrants. Athens and Barcelona both show that a full phase-out and a bounded freeze produce different investor behaviour, and Thessaloniki's approach has not run long enough to show which pattern it follows.

Consensus view: The Bank of Greece has repeatedly linked short-term-rental density in historic centres to housing-cost pressure for local residents, and Thessaloniki's 1st Municipal Community, the city's old town, sits at exactly the density level Bank of Greece research flags as tipping a neighbourhood toward tourist-only housing stock. Freezing first-time AMAD registrations there through 31 December targets that specific tipping point rather than the city's STR market as a whole.

Counter-view: Grant Thornton Greece's property-sector analysis has warned that municipal-level freezes push investment sideways rather than removing it: capital that would have registered a new short-let in the frozen zone typically buys or leases just outside the boundary, in Thessaloniki's case likely the 2nd or 3rd Municipal Communities, spreading the pressure the freeze was meant to contain.

Key tension: Whether a boundary-specific freeze can hold when the fines, up to 50% of rental income and a €20,000 minimum, are steep enough to deter unauthorised registration but do nothing to stop investment simply relocating a few streets over.

Sources:OT.gr (Oikonomikos Tachydromos, English edition)

Mentions:Greece →Thessaloniki →AMAD →Athens →Airbnb →Barcelona →Mediterranean →Spain →Greece Law 5275/2026 →

First Reported In

Update #10 · Spain's rent decree stalls on coalition rift

OT.gr (Oikonomikos Tachydromos, English edition)· 11 Jul 2026

Read original →

Causes and effects

Caused by

Greece closes in-country nomad visa route

Greece's March law abolishing in-country visa switching set the legal basis the Thessaloniki freeze extends.

Occurred 1 Mar 2026

Read story →

Athens STR ban widens to Thessaloniki, islands next

The March licence-transfer ban in Thessaloniki is now followed by a full first-registration freeze.

Occurred 1 Mar 2026

Read story →

This Event

Greece freezes short-lets in second city

Greece's freeze shows short-let enforcement advancing city by city through municipal ordinance, the sub-national route that needs no coalition vote, in contrast to Spain's stalled national decree.

Led to

Greece plans to keep Athens lets frozen

The July freeze in Thessaloniki's historic core runs to end-2026 and is now proposed for extension.

Occurred 5 Sept 2026

Read story →

Different Perspectives

UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy

Nandy told MPs around 3 September that England's register of short lets will be fully operational by March 2027. Wales opened compulsory registration for every paid stay on 1 October, with a deadline of 31 March 2027.

Venice budget assessor Michele Zuin

Zuin told Il Gazzettino on 21 September that a charge of about €30 on peak days from 2027 would be the most concrete solution. He added that the city must set new rules together with government and Parliament.

Saudi Premium Residency Center

The Center added 31 services on 22 September, according to the newspaper Okaz. Primary holders now register employment contracts through the Qiwa platform, and no Saudi Press Agency release confirms the package.

Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis

Mitsotakis announced at the Thessaloniki International Fair on 5 September that new short-let registrations in central Athens and Thessaloniki stay suspended to 31 December 2027. No ministerial decision has been found, and golden-visa applications fell 39% from January to July.

Cape Town housing group Ndifuna Ukwazi

Ndifuna Ukwazi backs the city's draft by-law, which rates lets available over 183 nights a year as commercial from 1 July 2027. Finance mayco member Siseko Mbandezi said it ensures fairness in the commercial accommodation sector.

Klungkung Regency and KPK

Klungkung took 2.7bn rupiah on Nusa Penida from 1 to 9 September against 1.1bn in the first ten days of August. The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) sent files on eight suspects in a residence-permit extortion case to prosecutors on 30 September, alleging 145.5bn rupiah was taken.