As far as I understand there are tax incentives for being able to add another floor to a house, as opposed to expanding another way. So the rebar out the top is due to tax.

I am fairly sure that you are not exempt from tax if you have an unfinished roof.

It has absolutely nothing to do with taxation.

It's simply easier (and cheaper) to add floors in the future that way.

I stand corrected! It's good to get the facts straight, there is a lot of misinformation about Greece and tax dodging (which, I imagine, is where I got the idea)

When I visited Greece in 1995, I didn't notice any unfinished roofs. I did notice that almost every single newer building had multiple options for future expansion. This included exposed steel rebar sticking up from the tops of concrete columns, for building additional stories, and some concrete foundations that extended beyond the roof cover. Those would likely follow the usage pattern: patio, roofed patio, interior room.

Our Greek-American family-friend (who owns a Greek restaurant in the US, and an American restaurant in Greece) explained that Greeks couldn't easily finance home construction or home improvements, so they build what they can afford at the time, and add on to it whenever they saved enough money (or collected enough stolen/black-market building materials). So everything has to be built for future expansion. And if that two-story building is taxed as a one-story building for a while, before it gets reassessed....

But this was before EU economic changes, so my information is likely out of date.

Nope: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/27662/do-greeks...

Depending on how much you believe Quora, it looks like other municipalities follow a similar approach. https://www.quora.com/Why-are-there-so-many-unfinished-build...

When I asked in India about all the buildings with unfinished tops I was told it was for tax purposes, though I didn't hear the specifics.

Of course it may vary from place to place, but in many places in NCR (Delhi and nearabouts), people expect government to eventually allow adding an extra floor so they add on pillars / iron bars for future needs.

just came from trip in Bolivia - whole La Paz is a sea of red brick walls, without any paint (and since the place is 3600-4100m high, its always cold).

reason - finished painted buildings get taxed, so nobody ever finishes them, and rather lives fugly but cheap.

Also valid for other towns, but it was most visible in La Paz, especially when using teleferico.