Pre-purchase home inspections
and defect checks in Greece.

A Greek purchase has a lawyer who checks ownership and encumbrances at the land registry or cadastre, and a notary who draws up the deed. Both are essential, and neither inspects the property. Damp, a failing roof terrace, an electrical installation from the 1980s or a crack across a beam are outside what either of them is asked to look at.

A structured inspection fills that gap. It tells you whether cracking is cosmetic or structural, whether damp is condensation or water getting in, whether the roof terrace waterproofing still works, and whether the heating and electrics have a realistic remaining life — with an indicative cost for each item that you can take into the negotiation.

The notary checks the deed. Nobody else checks the walls unless you ask.

Greek properties often carry changes nobody filed: an enclosed balcony, a room on the roof, a semi-basement turned into living space. Law 4495/2017 allows many of these to be legalised, and a sale needs an engineer's certificate on the property's legal status, the Electronic Building Identity documents where they apply, and an energy certificate (ΠΕΑ).

Those documents are prepared by the seller's engineer. Our job is different: we compare what stands on site with the permit and plans, list what does not match, and note whether it appears to be legalised. That gives you, and your lawyer, the questions to put to the seller before the deed rather than after.

Flat roof terraces are the most common source of leaks: the membrane under the tiles ages, joints open, and water appears two floors away from where it entered. Older reinforced-concrete blocks, especially those on open ground-floor pilotis and built before the modern seismic codes, need their cracking read carefully. Near the sea and on the islands, salt air corrodes reinforcement until the concrete cover spalls off balconies and slab edges.

An inspection looks for each of these deliberately rather than by chance, and says plainly when a finding needs a structural engineer's further assessment rather than a guess. Ground-floor and semi-basement homes get particular attention for rising damp, which is common and often painted over before a viewing.

Fresh paint on a ground-floor wall is a question, not an answer.

Many buyers of homes on the islands and in Athens live outside Greece and see the property once, if at all, before committing. That is exactly when an independent report matters most, because the decision rests on photographs chosen by the seller.

We arrange access with the agent or seller, inspect, and write the report so that someone who has never stood in the property can follow it: each finding photographed and located on the plan, with severity, indicative cost and the papers to ask for. We then walk you through it by phone before you instruct your lawyer.

Most homes bought in Greece are renovated soon after. If you renovate, we can supervise the works as a separate service: visits timed before waterproofing, insulation and services are covered, independent measurement of completed work before each payment, and a check of invoices and variations against the contract.

The job closes with a room-by-room snag list that is re-inspected rather than marked complete, and a file of the certificates, warranties and as-built information for every system installed — the papers that turn a later failure into a warranty claim instead of an expense.