Greek REICs in the spotlight of international capital

Senior executives from BriQ Properties REIC, Trade Estates REIC and Trastor REIC highlighted the potential of selected property sectors, while emphasising that greater scale, liquidity and free float are essential for attracting a larger share of international institutional capital.

Logistics, hospitality and prime offices lead investment opportunities

Logistics, hospitality and prime offices emerged as particularly attractive sectors, supported by structural supply-demand imbalances across the Greek property market.

BriQ Properties CEO Anna Apostolidou identified logistics and hospitality as areas with significant growth potential. Hospitality continues to benefit from the untapped value of destinations across Greece, while the logistics sector faces a shortage of modern facilities capable of meeting the requirements of the expanding third-party logistics (3PL) market.

Trastor CEO Tasos Kazinos similarly highlighted prime offices and modern logistics as segments where supply-demand imbalances are most pronounced. Approximately 80% of Trastor’s portfolio is concentrated in these two categories, reflecting the company’s positioning within Greece’s evolving commercial property market.

For Trade Estates, logistics and retail form part of an integrated investment strategy built around two complementary pillars. Its competitive advantage rests on specialised expertise, scale, established relationships and a focused operating platform.

The Greek REIC proposition: expertise and transparency

Beyond individual asset classes, executives highlighted several advantages of Greek REICs, including a competitive dividend tax regime relative to European peers, detailed knowledge of local markets and the transparency associated with listed investment vehicles.
Local expertise is particularly valuable in Greece, where property fundamentals vary significantly across regions and sectors. Established relationships and an understanding of local market conditions can support more effective asset sourcing, development and management.

Listed structures also offer investors greater transparency and tradability than private real estate investments. Nevertheless, the relatively limited liquidity of Greek REIC shares remains a significant obstacle, closely linked to their smaller market capitalisations and low free floats.
Greece’s economic recovery and continued foreign capital inflows provide a favourable backdrop. The challenge is ensuring that a greater proportion of these investment flows reaches the listed commercial real estate sector.

Leverage and capital structure strategies

The discussion highlighted different approaches to leverage, while emphasising that loan-to-value (LTV) ratios should not be assessed in isolation.
BriQ maintains an LTV of approximately 35%, reflecting a conservative, long-term capital strategy. According to Apostolidou, this approach has helped the company navigate interest-rate volatility while protecting its balance sheet and maintaining a stable dividend policy. Over the past decade, BriQ achieved an annualised distributed yield of approximately 9.7% per share, around 4–5 percentage points above the prevailing risk-free rate.
The company has also prioritised avoiding share dilution and improving portfolio diversification, including through the acquisition of ICI.

Trade Estates operates at a higher LTV of approximately 40–45%, but focuses on managing leverage alongside financing costs, interest-rate hedging and debt maturities. Approximately 95% of its €200 million debt is either fixed-rate or hedged, providing protection against interest-rate volatility.
This approach allows the company to assess borrowing in relation to the spread between asset returns and financing costs. Higher leverage can be appropriate when supported by quality income-producing assets, effective hedging and disciplined capital allocation.

The broader conclusion is that financial resilience depends on more than LTV. Liquidity, debt costs, maturity profiles, hedging and the income-generating capacity of the portfolio must all form part of an integrated capital-management strategy.

The dividend dilemma

Capital allocation presents Greek REICs with a further challenge: balancing shareholder distributions against the retention of earnings needed to finance growth.
Kazinos highlighted the ability of Greek REICs to reinvest and compound up to 50% of their profits as an important structural advantage. Retained earnings can support portfolio expansion and long-term value creation, but may also reduce immediate dividend yields, a key consideration for investors comparing listed property companies.
Competition for capital intensifies this dilemma. Greek REICs compete with domestic banks offering yields of around 4%, as well as European REICs generally offering yields of 3–5%. These alternatives can encourage investors to favour immediate distributions over reinvestment.
The strategic challenge is therefore to expand portfolios and achieve greater scale while maintaining an attractive and competitive dividend policy.

NAV discounts reflect market structure and macroeconomic conditions

Greek REICs’ discounts to net asset value (NAV) reflect both company-specific characteristics and broader market conditions.
Higher interest rates, inflationary pressures, elevated bond yields and geopolitical uncertainty have affected property valuations across Europe by increasing the cost of capital. Consequently, Greek REIC discounts cannot be attributed exclusively to domestic factors.
However, the relatively small size and limited liquidity of Greece’s listed real estate market create an additional structural disadvantage. Compared with larger European peers, Greek REICs offer investors fewer opportunities to deploy substantial capital efficiently, contributing to an additional illiquidity premium.

Foreign capital and the need for scale

The challenge facing Greece is not simply attracting foreign capital, but directing a greater share towards listed commercial real estate.
Foreign direct investment (FDI) has reached approximately €12.6 billion, compared with a historical average of around €5 billion and approximately €2.5 billion during the financial crisis. Nevertheless, real estate investment remains heavily concentrated in residential and hospitality assets.
Residential investment frequently involves individuals purchasing permanent or holiday homes, while hospitality continues to attract institutional and strategic investors. Listed commercial real estate captures a comparatively smaller share of overall inflows.

The scale of the listed market is a major constraint. Greece’s listed real estate sector is estimated at approximately €2.3 billion, while free floats stand at around 20%, compared with approximately 70–80% in European markets. These differences limit share liquidity and the ability of international institutional investors to build substantial positions. Larger investment platforms, broader shareholder bases and higher free floats could improve tradability and strengthen the sector’s appeal to international capital.

ESG as an investment consideration

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations are increasingly viewed as economic and financing issues rather than solely regulatory requirements. For companies holding long-duration assets, sustainability can influence financing access, operating costs, competitiveness and long-term asset values.
Trade Estates approaches ESG expenditure through a value-enhancement perspective. Investments in rooftop photovoltaic installations and electric vehicle charging infrastructure at retail parks aim to support sustainability objectives while improving the attractiveness and competitiveness of its properties.

Scale remains the next frontier

The discussion highlighted a Greek REIC market with identifiable opportunities across logistics, hospitality, prime offices and selected retail assets. The central question is whether listed companies can achieve the scale, liquidity and investor base necessary to capture a greater share of capital flowing into Greek real estate.

Conservative balance-sheet management, disciplined leverage, effective hedging and appropriate dividend policies will remain important amid elevated financing costs. At the same time, portfolio expansion, diversification and higher free floats will be critical to developing investment platforms capable of attracting international institutional investors.

Ultimately, the next phase of the Greek REIC sector will depend not simply on acquiring assets, but on combining scale, liquidity, sustainable income and disciplined capital allocation to compete more effectively with established European listed real estate markets.