Portugal sells you a legal system you already recognize. Greece sells you something else entirely: the lowest entry price left in Western Europe, a government that’s actively courting your capital, and a market that’s still catching up to where Spain and Portugal already are. That’s the trade. You give up some of the polish and predictability, and in exchange you get in earlier, cheaper, and with fewer people ahead of you in line.

If you’ve read the foreign real estate investing pillar post or the Portugal introduction post, you know the drill by now. This is the primer for the Greek arm of the series — the 30,000-foot view before we go deep on Athens, Crete, and the islands in later posts. It won’t make you an expert on Halkidiki versus the Peloponnese. It will get you to the point where you know whether Greece deserves a spot on your shortlist at all, and what you’d need to figure out next if it does.