#transaction-costs

#transaction-costs

A villa, apartment, or townhouse in Southern Europe may look affordable compared with prime London property, but the asking price is not the full cost of ownership. In Greece, buyers should usually allow around 7-10% of the property price for transaction costs, depending on the deal. The main cost is the property transfer tax. Greece's tax authority states that the standard real estate transfer tax is 3% of the taxable value, plus a small municipal levy.

Trust is not merely a social nicety - it is infrastructure. Across decades of empirical research, economists and political scientists have converged on a striking finding: societies and individuals with higher levels of interpersonal trust consistently outperform their low-trust counterparts on nearly every measurable dimension of economic and institutional life.

Christie's raised a projected $2.1bn in the first half of 2025-pretty much the same as last year. Sales in the 20th- and 21st-century art category were down 2%, but luxury, significantly, was up 29%. The headline numbers were almost identical at Sotheby's, whose first-half sales raised $2.2bn, just slightly down on the $2.3bn in the equivalent period last year.