In pro-Palestine hub of Athens, Israeli buyers increase local resentment

Exarchia residents say short-term rentals are driving up rents and eroding its character. Save Share Athens, Greece –Tonia Katerini, a 69-year-old architect, leaned into her computer, scrolling through the property contracts that she said are remaking her neighbourhood. Across Exarchia, the Athens district long known for its radical left-wing politics, flats are being bought up and turned into short-term rentals, pushing out the people who live there. For months, Katerini and a group of neighbours have been digitally mapping foreign purchases using public records, marking them with red dots. She zoomed out from her street on the map; it was a sea of red. The balcony doors of her flat, where she has lived since 1986, were open and noise from the cafes below drifted in past the plants and stacks of architectural plans. Her group says much of the money behind the rentals is Israeli; by their count, more than half of the area’s new company-run hotels and rentals . In a neighbourhood where Palestinian flags hang from balconies and solidarity slogans cover the walls, that has caused friction. On her own cobbled street, where the noise of arriving tourists rolling their suitcases wakes her in the morning, Israeli investors have bought two buildings, she said. The flat below hers belongs to one such company. “They are nice guys we have downstairs,” she said. “It’s an Israeli company.” A few streets away, a residential building is streaked with black paint. “Airbnbs leave us homeless,” reads one slogan across its facade. “Zionists not welcome,” reads another. Such buildings are easy to spot. Instead of residents’ names, the buzzer panels show only numbers and a keypad by the door releases keys for Airbnb guests. Across the neighbourhood, activists have splattered keypads and facades with red paint. They say short-term rentals are driving an aggressive gentrification that is pricing out locals and erasing the area’s identity. Foreign money has poured into Greek property in recent years: non-residents invested a record 2.75 billion euros ($3.2bn) in Greek real estate in 2024, according to the Bank of Greece, before easing last year. No official figures break down foreign buyers in Athens by nationality. But an annual survey of completed sales by the agency network RE/MAX Hellas found that Israelis were the largest group of foreign buyers in Attica, the region around the capital, ahead of buyers from Turkiye and Lebanon, reported the Greek weekly To Vima....