Tunisia: Real estate price explosion aborts middle-class dream of owning home

Majdi Al-Saidi-Tunisia

Faced with frustration, features paint frustration and frustration; Nabil Souli leaves the headquarters of a bank in the center of Tunis after reviewing the conditions and procedures for obtaining a bank loan for the purchase of an apartment of middle-class economy.

Khaldeh, a 13-year-old middle-income young man, could not afford to run into a long package of difficult banking and administrative procedures to obtain a loan to supplement the price of the apartment he intends to own after being overwhelmed by the high costs.

"Prices for apartments are rising fast and unreasonable, and just see the terms of getting a loan to finance the purchase of an apartment makes you convinced that it is impossible to hit." And "the simple citizen loses between an anvil of unfair amounts of rent (rent) and firearms prices for real estate. With these words, Nabil Souli reduces the difficulties encountered on his way to acquire a home.

He tells Al Jazeera Net that the skyrocketing real estate prices have become a nightmare for anyone who dreams of owning a home.

An unprecedented explosion
Nabil does not seem to be an isolated case, but he is one of thousands of Tunisians whose rapid increases in real estate prices have aborted their dream of owning a home, at a time when the sector is stagnating due to the inability to afford the housing price or to respond to the conditions of access to bank loans.

According to Hanan Mejri (average salaried employee), owning a home has become a frightening concern for a large group of Tunisians, who prefer to rent at the price of belonging to suffocating loans, especially with low purchasing power and increasing daily expenses.

The Tunisian Institute of Statistics recently announced that real estate prices in the country rose by more than 5% this year, which economists saw as a dangerous indicator that would deprive millions of employees and middle-wage earners from owning a home.

The prices of smaller apartments recorded a record increase of more than 13% to the limits of last June, while the rate of increase in house prices reached 11% compared to the same period last year.

The average price of an apartment in areas adjacent to the capital Tunis is 280,000 dinars (about $ 100,000) and upscale neighborhoods amount to five hundred thousand dinars ($ 180,000), according to Fahmi Shaaban, president of the chamber. Real estate developers and director of Shaaban Real Estate Group.

Shaaban says the island Net that the explosion of property prices is due to the high price of land for construction, which has doubled about twenty times in the upscale neighborhoods since 2011; which reflected directly on housing prices.

He adds that the price per square meter in the area of ​​Beheira (north of the capital) - the most prestigious areas in the country - is about 9 thousand dinars (more than 3.2 thousand dollars), and this huge increase weighs on the developers, since they do not enjoy the support of the state and support.

The spokesman blames the Tunisian authorities for the record explosion in prices, as they imposed a package of complex economic administrative measures for real estate developers, and lifted subsidies on raw materials for construction, which entered the sector in a severe crisis due to the reluctance of customers to bear unfair prices, he said.

Fahmi Shaaban ruled out the decline in the real estate market indicators as a result of the policy adopted by the government to pressure real estate companies, and continue to enact obstructive legislation in return for refusing to respond to the demands of workers in the sector.

Suffocating crisis
Tunisian banks grant loans to finance the purchase of a house, apartment, or plot of land for construction, taking into account the monthly wage of the customer and the duration of debt recovery, and special loans when collecting the salaries of the spouses, according to Hisham Warda, director of a branch of the Housing Bank in Tunisia).

Warda admits that prices for apartments and houses have risen suddenly, hurting everyone without exception and causing the sector to stagnate, but we are working at the bank to provide soft loans to encourage home ownership.

He says to Al Jazeera Net that the rise in real estate prices is an extension of the series of increases seen in most sectors, reflecting the difficult economic situation of the country, which undermined the purchasing power of the owners of the middle class, and resulted in a clear reluctance to acquire real estate loans, and the decline in housing loans index granted by the Housing Bank by more than 60%.

According to the Institute of Statistics, the real estate sector recorded a significant slump in the current year, as the volume of real estate exchanges (buying and selling) decreased by 10% at the beginning of this year, despite competitive offers between banking institutions to encourage employees and fixed-income people to acquire housing through a bank loan. .