The housing crisis is spreading beyond Athens

Data from the Eurostat Regional Yearbook 2026 show that the burden of housing costs has spread across the country, with some regions outside Attica recording the most adverse figures in the European Union.

All 13 Greek regions are among the 20 EU regions where, in 2025, at least 16% of the population faced excessive housing costs. Eurostat defines a household as being in this situation when it spends more than 40% of its income on housing, including rent or mortgage payments, energy, water, maintenance, taxes and other related expenses.

The greatest pressure is not recorded in Athens. Eastern Macedonia and Thrace had the highest rate in the entire EU, at 33.9%, while the Peloponnese, at 33.3%, was the only other European region where at least one in three residents exceeded the housing-cost burden threshold. Even Crete, which recorded the lowest figure among Greece’s regions, stood at 18.5%, compared with an EU average of 7.7%.

The data indicate that the pressure is not limited to property prices or rents. It extends to households’ overall ability to finance their housing costs.

In 2025, the 13 Greek regions recorded the 13 highest rates in the EU in terms of the share of residents with overdue payments on mortgages, rent, utility bills or purchases made in instalments. In the Ionian Islands, approximately two in three residents, or 66.3%, faced such payment arrears—the highest rate in Europe. In Western Greece, the corresponding figure was 50.7%, compared with an EU average of 9.2%.

A similar pattern emerges in the energy dimension of housing. In Western Greece, 30.4% of the population reported that they could not keep their homes adequately warm, the highest rate in the EU, while in the Ionian Islands the figure reached 25.8%. More than one in five residents faced the same problem in Central Macedonia, the Peloponnese and the South Aegean.

The geographical spread of housing pressures sets the current housing crisis apart from an earlier perception of a crisis primarily associated with Athens and rising rents in high-demand areas.

In the island regions, another factor comes into play: the intensity of tourism activity. The report records Zakynthos as having 162,700 tourist overnight stays per 1,000 inhabitants in 2024, the highest ratio in the EU, while other Greek island regions also rank among the highest. The data do not, in themselves, establish a causal relationship between tourism and housing costs; they do, however, illustrate the scale of additional demand placed on certain local housing markets.