Greece’s celebrities and local show biz people sell their properties as they do not manage to keep them and pay the maintenance costs due to the economic crisis. Luxurious villas with breathtaking views. According to report by Sunday newspaper Real News singer Lefteris Pantazis sells his villa which has a worth 15 million euro. The villa is located in seaside area Vouliagmeni, between Athens and Sounion Cap.
Yiannis Kotsiras, another singer, sells his luxurious house with furniture for 650,000 euro. “ideal for large families or musicians” says the sell ad. The villa can be sold also without furniture for a lower price.
Actor Dimitris Piatas sells his home in Lycabettus for 520,000 euro and top-models photographer Dimitris Poros sells his home for 1.9 million euro. (via nonews-news blog)
PS Sic transit gloria mundi*…
*Thus passes the glory of the world”. It has been interpreted as “Worldly things are fleeting”…
There must be people out there with the money to buy these places…..
Yes. Nazis, Turks, Al-Q`Aida members, Russian mafia…
And it is not that I like these overpaid celebrities who made money out of nothing, but at least they belong here.
Too bad we couldn’t get Maria Menounos, John Stamos, Bob Kostas, and other famous Greek-Americans to come over and buy up these. I’d be very happy to see them as opposed to the former owners or the more nefarious ones Xenos mentions. Oh well, we’ll see (LOL)…
Sorry, but €650’000 can’t be considered luxurious…
well… maybe it’s a luxurious 60 sqm box
I don’t know where your family gets its money from, but in a country where a good income is 3,000 euros a month, then 650,000 is definitely luxurious.
Of course, if you are talking about criminals, politicians and talentless singers — maybe this is peanuts. For ordinary Greeks, 650,000 is a great deal of money to spend on a home, and most can only dream of it.
I love to trade my mud hut for 650K villa
Are the maintenance costs really a problem for these VIP’s, or are they simply bringing their wealth to safe havens outside of Greece, like most other rich Greeks?
:-/
Property taxes are beginning to become effectively enforced? That would be positive signal.
No, the property tax is a feudal piece of neo-Nazi shit, that makes no distinction about ability to pay or actual income. A tax that was enforced illegally through other people’s electricity bills is an indicator that the Greek state has descended into complete anarchy and arbitrary conduct — at the behest of the Troika.
Of course, most of the people with expensive villas did not pay the appropriate taxes on their income — and now cannot afford the property tax because they do not have that same income. How is this progress? We still have the same problems as before, and have merely added to them.
The rest of Europe is as clueless as the worst Greek politicians — and just as corrupt. The only thing that anyone is interested in is protecting their own money. Europe will fall unless this mentality is removed from the empty heads of European politicians.
You better get used to other people protecting their own money. And taxes being collected, if not volyntarily, then involuntarily. Where I live politicians get horsewhipped every time media reports another billion burned for supporting these tax evading villa owners.
If they are now broke, their problem. No tears.
If Europe continues down the road of blinkered nationalistic protection of their own money, Europe will fail. By fail, I mean that the underlying shift of capital power to Asia will shortly become very visible in terms of per capita GDP, unemployment and quality of life.
If you think that childish nationalistic arguments such as “It’s my money, why should I give any to the dirty Greek boy?” are productive, then you are quite wrong. European countries cannot survive on their own, which we have known for the last 35 years. Even Mme Thatcher, who hated the whole thing, more or less understood the imperative. Europe acting as a bloc has a chance of maintaining its standard of living, up to a point; as small countries, they will collapse.
Europe will fail if it continues to spend as it does. And there seems to be really strong denial about that.
Yes, there is denial of right wing crap that has nothing to do with economics. The lesson of the 1930s depression was not to cut spending — but it seems that some people are very slow learners.
Greece ain’t the US. The states could get the dollars they needed from the investors and banks. They didn’t annoy other American nations with constant demands for money.
Also, Keynesian job programs are very helpful if the economy and the government are in a healthy state, but they are NOT a substitute for reforms, and JMK never pretended they are. Greece still is such a mess, any additional money would only start a short lived straw fire. Nobody wants to waste his Euros on this.
Greece is desperately in need of reforms, but not the ones that the Troika is imposing. Privatisations will actually damage the econmy, with serious impact on already bad income distribution, and clear problems of oligopolistic markets. The standard IMF neoliberal clapatrap has never worked and will destroy the little that actually does function.