Designing and Building a Holiday Home Greece

Following on from Building a Holiday Home in Greece – Financing and Building Plots, you are now aware of the process of finding a suitable place to build your dream home in Greece. With that taken care of, the next stage in the process is Designing and Building a Holiday Home Greece, finding the right people to make sure that the entire process runs smoothly. The main factor to have in the back of your mind is that building projects take longer in Greece: Whilst you can draft a contract, tying builders to timelines, the entire process will take longer than in the UK or Northern Europe.

Getting to Grips with the Regulations Concerning Building a Holiday Home Greece

Renovating or self-building a house in Greece can be very daunting if you are not aware of some of the nuances of the Greek building regulations. There are, as always, a few things that make sense, a few laws from leftfield, and a mass of red tape. The key is to have the right people in place to help the process run smoothly and ensure that you do not unwittingly break any laws and end up with the extra expense of putting things right. You should already have a good lawyer in place and engaging the services of an architect or reliable contractor is the next step.

Whilst you can manage the construction process yourself, it may be worth looking at hiring a project manager, usually costing around 10% of the total cost of the building project. By asking other Expats, you should be able to find a constructor who is reliable, thorough and speaks English, enabling you to liaise with the building teams.

Designing and Building a Holiday Home Greece

A Few Things to Watch out for When Designing and Building a Holiday Home Greece

As with any building project, you should research the local restrictions and conditions before buying a building plot, ensuring that there are no nasty surprises that will eat into your budget. Your architect and contractor will be well aware of these so sit and work through the costs and, as with a building project in any country, add half on again to the projected costs to give yourself some protection from budget overruns.

Building Materials and Restrictions

Many areas insist that you use only certain building materials for your house, especially in areas of outstanding natural beauty or historical interest. This can drastically increase the cost of materials and labor, so make sure that you are aware of these from the start. For example, any house built in the Mani area of the Peloponnese must be clad with local stone and the expertise for this does not come cheap.

Connecting the Utilities

You should always check how easy it is to connect utilities; if the building has no electricity supply, phone line or water inflow, you will have to pay for it to be connected. Due to European legislation, the Greek government is no longer allowed to subsidize this so, if you find a house on the top pf a mountain, the electricity will cost you tens of thousands of Euros to connect or you will have to resort to a generator.

Earthquake Legislation

Due to strict Earthquake planning legislation, you must have the input of an architect or structural engineer into the roof, and it is safer to use a specialist contractor for this, even of you plan to do most of the building work yourself.

VAT and Property Taxes

In Greece, once you have finished the building, you will have to pay VAT and you cannot reclaim this as you can in some other countries. This is 20% of the value of the property, although you should be able to get away with using the tax-assessment figure, which is always significantly lower than the market value.

IKA Payments

The IKA system is the national insurance system of Greece, paying for medical care and pensions. A strange nuance of the law means that you have to pay the IKA of the contractors working on your house, even if you don’t use any contractors! The architect calculates the number of man hours needed to construct the building and you must pay the IKA payment for this, even if you are doing the work yourself or bringing friends over to help. The fines are steep if you fail to take this into account, so make sure that you are aware of how much and factor it into the budget.

Designing and Building a Holiday Home in Greece

Designing and building a holiday home Greece is not a difficult process if you are thorough in your research and ensure that you have the right people in place to ensure that the process runs smoothly.

Photo Courtesy of Dimorsitanos