Find a home
List your property
A tenant who looks fine at a viewing can still stop paying in month four, and in Greece removing them is a court process measured in months. Screening is the cheapest insurance a landlord has. This guide is the full process: which documents to ask for, how to verify income, what you can and cannot do under Greek data and equal-treatment law, and the red flags we see in practice.
What does tenant screening in Greece actually involve?
It is verifying three things with the applicant's consent: who they are, that they can pay, and that they have paid reliably before. You are not buying a database report. Greece has no landlord-facing tenant credit system, so screening is document-led, built on identity, income and references, with a guarantor where the income is thin. And because a residential lease binds both sides for three years under Law 1703/1987, you are choosing a three-year relationship, so the work earns its place.
What documents should I ask a tenant for?
Enough to assess identity and ability to pay, and no more. The core set:
Document | What it proves | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
ID or passport | Identity | Must match the name on every other document |
Greek tax number (AFM) | Tax registration, needed for the lease declaration | A tenant with no AFM cannot be declared to AADE |
Proof of income (payslips, the E1 tax return, or an employer letter) | Ability to pay | Cross-check payslips against the tax return for consistency |
Teiresias non-registration certificate | No bounced cheques or defaulted debts | The applicant pulls their own; you cannot request it for them |
Previous-landlord reference | Payment and conduct history | A reluctant or unreachable previous landlord is itself a flag |
Keep it proportionate. You need enough to judge identity and ability to pay, not someone's medical history or a year of full bank statements.
How do I verify a tenant's income?
The working benchmark across the market is that rent should not exceed 30 to 35% of the tenant's documented net monthly income. For an employee, ask for the last two or three payslips plus the most recent E1 tax return, and check that the two agree. For the self-employed, the tax return and recent bank inflows carry more weight than a single month. An employer letter confirming role, salary and contract type adds a useful cross-check. This 30 to 35% guide is the widely used affordability benchmark, the long-standing 30% rule, a market convention rather than a Greek legal requirement.
Where the income is thin or hard to document (students, new arrivals, freelancers early in the tax year), a guarantor is the standard fix.
Can I run a credit check on a tenant in Greece?
Not the way a UK or US landlord would. Greece has no landlord-accessible tenant credit database. Teiresias, the country's registry of defaults and bounced cheques, is queried by banks and credit institutions for their own lending, not by private landlords screening a tenant. What you can do is ask the applicant to obtain their own Teiresias non-registration certificate, which shows they carry no recorded defaults, and hand it to you. It is their record to request, and asking for it is becoming a standard part of careful screening.
What is a guarantor, and when do I need one?
A guarantor (εγγυητής) co-signs the lease and agrees to cover rent the tenant fails to pay. It is not mandatory, but it is the sensible safeguard when the applicant is a student, a young professional, or anyone whose income you cannot fully document. Screen the guarantor the same way as the tenant, with identity, AFM and income, because their promise is only as good as their own ability to pay.
How do I screen without breaking the law?
Two rules sit over the whole process.
Data protection (GDPR and Greek Law 4624/2019). Collect only what you need to assess identity and ability to pay, tell the applicant why you are collecting it, store the documents securely, and delete the files of anyone you reject. Do not demand medical records, criminal records or blanket bank statements.
Equal treatment (Law 4443/2016). Greek law prohibits discrimination in access to housing. Select on documented ability to pay and references, never on nationality, origin or family status.
In practice this is freeing, not limiting. A documented, consistent process is both legally safer and a better predictor of a reliable tenant than instinct. The legal basis is Law 4624/2019 and Law 4443/2016.
What are the red flags?
Some patterns recur in the deals that later go wrong. None is proof on its own, but together they are a reason to slow down rather than take the first applicant under the pressure of an empty month.
Pressure to skip the paperwork. «I can pay cash today, let's just sign» usually means the documents would not survive a look.
Reluctance to provide income proof or a reference. The one document a good tenant supplies easily is the one a risky tenant cannot.
Payslips that do not match the tax return. Inconsistent numbers are the most common quiet warning.
A story that keeps changing. Shifting answers on employment, on who will actually live there, or on how the rent will be paid.
Is a large deposit a substitute for screening?
No. The deposit is one to two months by custom and is returnable, so it is security, not income, and it does not cover months of unpaid rent or a slow eviction. Greece has the highest share of households in the EU behind on rent, mortgage or utility bills, 43% in 2024 per Eurostat, and removing a non-paying tenant runs through the courts over months. The tenant's documented reliability protects you far more than the deposit does. The removal process itself is covered in our eviction laws in Greece guide.
What to do next
Verify identity, AFM and income, ask for a Teiresias certificate and a previous-landlord reference, add a guarantor where the income is thin, and keep the whole process documented and proportionate. Once a tenant is screened and signed, the next job is getting the rent in reliably, covered in rent collection in Greece. If you would rather not run screening yourself, mamaXO sources and screens tenants as part of its management plans and charges only on rent actually collected. For an estimate for your flat, get in touch.
