ENFIA in Crete: How Greece's Annual Property Tax Is Actually Calculated
ENFIA is built from a price per square metre for your zone, multiplied by the size and age of the building, then trimmed or raised by thresholds and discounts. Here is how the 2026 bill is put together for a home in Crete, which discounts a foreign owner can really claim, and what the 2027 revaluation could change.
ENFIA is not an expensive tax for most homes in Crete, but it is an opaque one: a state zone price, the size and age of the building and a stack of thresholds and discounts, none of it shown on the bill. Know the parts and you can check your assessment, and see that of the much-advertised 2026 discounts, only one really helps a foreign owner. Rules and figures as they stood in October 2026, checked against AADE’s 2026 announcements, the ENFIA law 4223/2013 as amended, laws 5162/2024 and 5246/2025, and the Greek financial press.
I am not an accountant or a tax adviser and this is not tax advice. The figures below show how the tax is built; your bill depends on details only your assessment shows, so have a Greek accountant check anything you rely on.
ENFIA in one minute. The main tax on a building is floor area × a basic tax of €2.00 to €16.20 per m² set by the zone price, × coefficients for age (0.60 to 1.25), floor (0.98 to 1.03) and frontage (1.00 to 1.02). Individuals with total property up to €400,000 get a 10–30% reduction. A single property right worth over €400,000 adds 0.2–1%, once total property passes €300,000, and the whole bill rises 5–20% above €500,000 total. Homes insured against earthquake, fire and flood get 20% off (law 5162/2024). Tax-resident main homes in settlements of up to 1,500 people pay half in 2026 and nothing from 2027 (law 5246/2025). The 2026 bill: 12 instalments, 31 March 2026 to 26 February 2027.
How the main tax on a building is built
ENFIA starts from the same zone prices that feed the objective value of a property, the zone price in force on 1 January of the tax year. That price places the building in a tax band, and each band carries a basic tax per square metre. In the tables published after the 2022 rewrite (law 4916/2022), zones priced up to €750 per m² pay €2.00, the middle band most published tables give is €2.80, zones from €1,501 to €2,500 pay €3.70, and the bands climb steeply above €3,000 to €16.20. Most of Crete falls in the first three bands.
The basic tax is multiplied by the floor area and by coefficients. Age surprises people: a building under five years old is weighted 1.25 and one over a century old 0.60, so a new build pays more per square metre than an old stone house in the same zone. Floor runs from 0.98 (basement) to 1.03, frontage from 1.00 to 1.02, and storerooms and other auxiliary spaces pay a tenth of the rate.
A worked example: an 80 m² new apartment in a zone priced at €1,800 per m², a level that appears in central Heraklion and Chersonissos. 80 × €3.70 × 1.25 = €370; floor and frontage at about 1.01 each take it to roughly €377. If the owner’s total property in Greece is valued between €150,000 and €250,000, the 20% reduction brings it to about €302, and insurance, below, takes off roughly a fifth again — well within the range the running costs of a Crete home assume.
The charges above €300,000 and €500,000
Greece abolished the old “supplementary tax” for individuals in 2022 and replaced it with two charges that work much the same way. If your total property exceeds €300,000, any single property right valued above €400,000 pays an extra 0.2% (€400,000–500,000) rising to 1% (above €2 million). If the total passes €500,000, the whole bill rises by 5% to 20%. A large villa can trigger both; an ordinary flat or village house neither.
Land outside the town plan
A plot outside the town plan is taxed as a field, not a building plot; the house on it is taxed separately as a building. Fields are taxed per square metre with coefficients for location, use and irrigation, so the land line on a rural bill is usually small. Fields outside the plan also do not count towards the €300,000 threshold. I could not find a current official consolidation of the field coefficients, so read the land line on your assessment.
The 2026 discounts, and who actually gets them
Insurance. Law 5162/2024, article 10, gives 20% off ENFIA for a home with a taxable value up to €500,000, and 10% above that, if it was insured against earthquake, fire and flood for the previous year; three to twelve months of cover gives a pro-rated discount, under three months nothing. The policy is declared on AADE’s myPROPERTY platform against the property’s ATAK number before the bills go out; for 2026 the window closed in February. The minimum sum insured is given as €1,000 per m² in some 2026 guides and €900 in others, so check that year’s AADE decision. This is the discount a non-resident can claim, and the insurance side is covered here; 428,147 owners received it in 2026.
Small settlements. Law 5246/2025 halves ENFIA in 2026 and abolishes it from 2027 for main residences in settlements of up to 1,500 people. The headlines leave out the conditions: the owner must be a Greek tax resident, the home must be the main residence on their last tax return, and it must be worth no more than €400,000. A holiday home owned by someone living in Manchester or Munich gets nothing, however small the village. Whether you count as resident is a question for the 183-day rules.
The other 2026 cuts, for low incomes, large families and serious disability, rest on income and family criteria that, as far as I can tell, assume a Greek tax return.
Bills, instalments and paying from abroad
ENFIA falls on whatever you own on 1 January, so a house bought in February is still the seller’s bill that year. The 2026 assessments, €2.30 billion on 6.17 million owners, were issued on 15 March 2026: pay in one go, or in 12 monthly instalments from 31 March 2026 to 26 February 2027, none below €10. I could not find a discount for paying in full in 2026.
A non-resident sees the bill on myAADE (Applications > Tax Services > Properties > E9 Statement/ENFIA) and gets an e-mail notice, which needs the tax number and portal access in the AFM guide. AADE accepts payment from abroad by SEPA credit transfer in euro, with a separate route outside SEPA. A tax representative is now optional for most non-residents; managing a Crete home from abroad covers when one is still worth having.
What the 2027 revision could change
Zone prices were last revised in 2021 and have applied to ENFIA since 2022. Ta Nea reported on 26 September 2026 that the next revision is expected in the second half of 2027, after the elections, and that more than 2,100 areas, “from Crete to Evros”, will get objective values for the first time. Because ENFIA uses the zone price in force on 1 January, a revision in late 2027 would first show up in the 2028 bill.
The precedent reassures only in aggregate. In 2022 the government rewrote the scales (law 4916/2022) so the 2021 revaluation would not raise total ENFIA, and the ministry says it will review “coefficients, scales and limits” again. But a flat total still left some owners paying more, and an area gaining a zone price for the first time is the likeliest to see its bill change.
The honest downside
ENFIA is hard to check. The tables have been rewritten several times since 2013, published versions disagree on band edges, and AADE’s English page for non-residents still said “ten” instalments in October 2026, when the 2026 bill came in twelve. The age coefficient penalises the new builds most foreign buyers want, and nearly every headline discount depends on Greek tax residence. The one open to everyone, insurance, must be claimed in a short February window that is announced mainly in Greek. And the 2027 revaluation could change the tax base for areas with no zone price today, with no detail yet on how bills will be protected.
Disclosure: Honest Crete does not sell or list property. Enquiries sent from this section go to a licensed estate agent, not to us; the full statement is below. Nothing in this article names a developer, a property, an accountant, an insurer or any other professional, and it never will.
Worth it if you want to check your ENFIA assessment line by line, confirm the insurance discount was applied, or budget a purchase with the 2027 revaluation in mind. Skip it if you only need a ballpark: for most ordinary homes in Crete it is a few hundred euros a year.
How is ENFIA calculated on a house in Crete?
ENFIA's main tax on a building is the floor area multiplied by a basic tax per square metre, which depends on the zone price of the area, and then by coefficients for age, floor and street frontage. In 2026 the basic tax runs from €2.00 per m² in the cheapest zones to €16.20 in the dearest; most of Crete sits between €2.00 and €3.70. Owners with modest total property then get a reduction of 10% to 30%.
Do foreign owners pay ENFIA in Greece?
Yes. ENFIA is charged on property in Greece held on 1 January of each year, whether the owner lives in Greece or not. Non-residents receive the assessment on myAADE, the tax authority's portal, with an e-mail notice, and can pay from a euro account in a SEPA country by bank transfer.
When is ENFIA 2026 due?
ENFIA 2026 was issued in March 2026 and can be paid in one go or in 12 monthly instalments. The first instalment was due by 31 March 2026 and the last falls on 26 February 2027, the last working day of that February. Each instalment must be at least €10.
Can I get the ENFIA discount for an insured holiday home in Crete?
The ENFIA insurance discount under law 5162/2024 is 20% for a home with a taxable value up to €500,000 and 10% above that, if the policy covered earthquake, fire and flood for at least three months of the previous year. The law speaks of residences rather than only main residences, so a holiday home can qualify. The policy has to be declared on AADE's myPROPERTY platform early in the year, before the bills are issued.
Is ENFIA abolished in Cretan villages?
Law 5246/2025 cut ENFIA by 50% in 2026 and abolishes it from 2027, but only for the main residence of a Greek tax resident, worth up to €400,000, in a settlement of up to 1,500 people. A holiday home owned by someone who lives abroad does not qualify, even in the smallest village.
Will ENFIA go up after the 2027 objective value revision?
The next revision of Greek zone prices is expected in the second half of 2027, and ENFIA is calculated on the zone price in force on 1 January of each tax year, so the first bill it could affect is 2028. The government says it will review the tax's coefficients and scales to avoid a 'tax shock', as it did with the 2022 rewrite (law 4916/2022), but that protects the total collected, not each owner's bill.
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