Greece

• Greece has an online portal where one can bid and buy foreclosed homes: https://www.eauction.gr

"To better understand how this platform accelerates the processing of auctions, we wanted to look in some detail at every property that has appeared online. However, unsurprisingly, no data is available online; nothing from the Notary Association website; nothing from Athens Bar Association website. The only way to collect this data was to loop through every property on eauction.gr to collect the relevant information and put it into a dataset of 45,918 lots that can then be analysed. Challenging, but totally worthwhile.

The dataset, which comes along with 22,119 items of documentation for each unique online auction in PDF and Word Doc format, in Greek language, gives open access to basic information on the identity of the debtor, including their name and VAT number, and the hastener pursuing the auction, the starting bid, the current status and date of the auction. New properties are being added on the platform on a daily basis. All cases can be tracked and counted so that journalists, activists, academics, advocates and active citizens can oversee what is going on in the platform while generating new knowledge and empowering affected communities."

Source: Whose Home Is This? At Least 55,625 Properties Under the Hammer in Real Estate Auctions — and Counting, published by Sotiris Sideris in AthensLive on 26 September 2019.

"The global housing crisis has caused a significant number of people to lose their homes due to unpaid debts. In Greece, frequent public auctions have been organized, representing the ultimate act of home deprivation as the effect of financialization. Stop Actions / Network United Alliance against Auctions have focused their efforts on preventing auctions from happening. They have typically done this by organizing people to physically block the entrance of the auction venue, preventing court officials and potential buyers from entering and performing the auction, or obstructing auctions once they have started. Their aim is to challenge the legality of the very process (in compliance with local legislation) and, there- fore, its results. However, the legislation regulating the auctions have changed and the strategies of fighting them have had to as well. More specifically, the new law has shifted the auctions to the internet, resulting in online processes. Hence, there is no physical space to target with direct action. In reaction to the new circumstances, Stop Actions/ Network United Alliance against Auctions have shifted their focus towards public demonstration in front of the offices of notaries who perform online auctions, raising public awareness, and putting pressure on banks to make deals with tenants and postpone the auctions. http://pleistiriasmoistop.blogspot.com"

Source: Housing Financialization: Trends, Actors and Processes (p55). Published in February 2019 by the European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City, and the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung. Available as a PDF file from https://www.rosalux.eu/kontext/controllers/document.php/405.f/9/6fd0db.pdf