Yearly Costs

These are the yearly costs you will need to consider when owning a house in Greece - although they are applicable to a holiday property anywhere in the world.

Consider painting outside every three years. Properties located by the coast will often require more frequent painting than those on higher ground.

Much depends on how they were planned/planted. Watering in the summer is of course a must. An automatic system will pay during the long term but it does use more water than a manual system. Weeds are not normally a problem, as the summer heat fries anything without a substantial root - local gardeners are available who will offer 'basic' garden maintenance once or twice a week - usually inexpensive.

The billing system is similar to elsewhere in Europe and the charges are similar.

Again similar to elsewhere. Sent bi-monthly with a standing charge of 10 Euros (for a standard single line). Then units used at 0.10 Euros per unit. Incidentally ISDN phone lines are now readily available and inexpensive. Ours cost 35 Euros to install, and this included the ISDN box. The standing charge is double a single line (as the ISDN has two lines) but the unit price is the same.

It is easy to get a connection. OTENET is the national ISP. We, at Agni Travel, have found them reasonably reliable and fast. A standard dialup connection, costs 10.26 Euros per month, a faster ISDN connection costs 25 Euros per month. The cost for the phone while online is: daytime - 0.35 Euros per hour, and evening (10pm - 8am) 0.18 Euros. ADSL (broadband) is now becoming available in some areas.

There are no rates. A small charge for rubbish collection, street lighting and so on is added to the water bill. See opposite.

Although summers in Corfu are warm and dry, the winters can be wet. Closed houses can suffer from damp. Either locate a willing neighbour who you trust to open the house to air on a regular basis (for a small yearly payment) or use a dedicated property maintenance company. There are several.

Do not forget to take out house insurance. It costs around 200 Euros per year.

Corfu Property Management is a villa management company. They offer the following services:

• Key-holding
  
• Security Checks
  
• Mail and Post Service
  
• Bill Paying
  
• Changeovers
  
• Airport Transfers
  
• General Cleaning
  
• Food Stocking
  
• Gardening

Homepage: www.corfupropertymanagement.com
E-mail: info@corfupropertymanagement.com

Corfu Villa Care is a Villa Management company operated by Alan & Jan Savory. They offer the following services:

We will hold your keys locally to your property, to be made available to guests, visitors, tradesmen, etc, when requested. We can also be named as a contact for your alarm system.

Your property will be personally visited and checked weekly, or as often as requested, to ensure security systems are functioning. We will check and inspect all services during the visit to give you confidence that your property is as you would expect whilst empty. Any damage or faults recorded during the visit will be reported immediately to you, with digital photographs when necessary.

Your guests need not arrive at your property to figure things out for themselves. We can arrange to be there on arrival to handover keys, introduce the property, or just carry the luggage!

You and your guests can be collected from Corfu airport in comfort and style. Once we have your flight number, we can arrange to be at the arrival gate on time. Parties over 4 people will be charged extra.

We will be happy to meet our clients at their request to discuss ongoing services or requirements. Our expertise will be offered should you consider any internal or external work at the property, and if requested we will obtain the best price for any of these works from UK tradesmen and suppliers.

Our aim is to ensure that your guests enjoy their holiday and want for nothing. To assist this we can offer a range of services, from grocery packs to car hire.

Should you or your guests require a visit to the property for any reason, we can be in attendance within two hours to deal with whatever situation has arisen. This does not include guest requests, which can be made free by calling by telephone, which will be left at the property.

We can maintain the appearance of the outside of your property regularly. Whether by sweeping patio areas, cleaning windows, or pool cleaning and landscaping.

Once your property has been vacated, or prior to any arrivals, your property will be thoroughly cleaned. This will include all towels and linen being removed and laundered, beds being re-made, towels being hung and toilet rolls changed or replaced. Particular attention will always be paid to the bathrooms and kitchen to ensure hygiene. Prices vary on property size, and include all laundering costs.

We can arrange an inventory of the entire contents of your property at anytime requested by you. As a matter of choice, we will check for missing, damaged, or broken items during handovers. The results of the inventory, as with all correspondence, can be e-mailed directly to you.

We will collect your mail weekly and forward to any given address, whether in the UK or Greece. Client pays postage. Only applicable when an annual agreement has been made.

Alan & Jan Savory
corfuvillacare@yahoo.co.uk

The following was added to the message forum by Peter Cookson from Spear Travel. Excellent Advice:

In the last year, over 100 foreign registered cars have been impounded in Corfu as they had outstayed their welcome. There is, generally, no redress to this due to the prohibitive cost of the penalties; the cars are then sold at auction or scrapped.

Greece is the last country with full EC membership not to make it 'simple' (it never is in any country, not even in the UK!) to register a foreign owned vehicle. You have to remember that going back only 15 or so years, cars cost double or treble what they cost in the UK, and there is a hangover from that.

Don't bother taking your car over to Italy for the weekend and then reimporting it. They pick up on that easily now and I know of 2 people recently who have been refused permission to bring their car back into Greece that way and have lost their cars as a result. The police and customs are not stupid.

People who bring their UK cars into Greece on the basis that they can avoid paying tax and insurance, shouldn't be in Greece in the first place. They are a danger to both themselves and anyone else on the road, and should realise that if they have an accident, uninsured, they will be thrown into jail, quite rightly.

If you want to live the Greek way of life, then behave like a Greek. Once you have your residency permit, you can buy a Greek car. It's as simple as that and by far the most economical way of having a car in Greece.

OK, fine if you want to bring your car out for 6 months, make sure it is taxed and insured and then either be prepared to dump it in Customs, drive it back to the UK in the winter and fly out again, or maybe transfer it, legally, to someone else who wants to drive back.

Overall, it is far cheaper to ship your goods out and fly your family out and rent a car until you can buy one in Greece than to reregister your UK car, which, unless it is right hand drive, isn't going to be much use anyway.
Peter Cookson

It looks simple enough, but the humble Greek water bill is a little confusing - so we are here to help.

Below the Address information, you will see the previous and current meter readings (181 and 200 in our above example) and the amount of cubic meters of water used (19).
To the right of that is the date that this bill must be paid by. 22/8/2003 in our case. If you do not pay by this date, you will not be cut off, but a penalty will be added to the next bill.

The first 0 -20 meters are charged at 36 cents per meter. 21-40 meters are charged at 53 cents and so on on a continuing rising scale up to 100 meters. After that you are charged 1.76 Euros per meter used. (I know this seem illogical: the more you use, the more per unit you pay, but here water is in short supply.)
The next line shows the sub total for the amount of units used. (4,32 in our example.)
Next the fun! An 80% tax which covers: TV license, street lights and rubbish (Wheelie bin) collection. This comes to 3,46 in our example.
The next line combines the water bill and the 80% tax (5,87)
Then add another small tax for good measure. (97 cents)
Then add Vat at 18%. (1,06)
Then a couple of other amounts and the bill totals to 16 Euros.

The above example was for our house up at Porta, which is empty for most of the time. Dad sometimes pops up there to water the garden and thus we use very little water. A four bedroom villa with pool would typically use 161 cubic meters, giving a bill of 407,50 Euros. The Taverna in contrast uses about 300 cubic meters of water during each summer quarter, making the total nearer 1000 Euros!