Greek state RE agency KED wins new head, new powers

Greece is one of the European nations about to renew efforts to reap value from state-owned real estate in an attempt to offset the impact on its budget deficit of higher spending amid the recession. The institutional and the human face of this is state property agency Hellenic Public Real Estate Corporation, KED-HPREC, and its new CEO Konstantinos Fotopoulos. "The property we manage is about e70bn in value, and that's quite a lot," Fotopoulos told PIE. "But to put this into context, most of this is not yet available for sale or lease or development. First we have to make a value assessment of all this land and all this property. But we can say at this point that we have at least identified some special real estate assets that we can already offer for development, and some others that are suitable for sale and leaseback."