A housing expert claims that the inverse correlation between home prices and rentals reflected in official data indicates that the figures are not accurate. Beytollah Sattarian, a professor at the University of Tehran, says contrary to official data home prices have in fact not declined.
According to the latest monthly housing market data, home prices and rents have been inversely related with housing prices falling and rentals climbing, Eghtesadnews reported. Housing data is released by several institutions including the Central Bank of Iran, the Ministry of Roads of Urban Development with various degrees of inconsistency.
CBI data shows that home prices in Tehran dropped 2% during the one-month period from Oct. 23- Nov. 21 last year but rents increased 10.8% month-on-month and 11.9% at an annualized rate.
“It’s very hard to precisely determine housing price fluctuations unless we compare two identical periods for the number of deals and we cannot compare a boom era with a period of recession,” the instructor told the online news agency.
Decline in the fortunes of the once lucrative real estate market began in 2012 after a period of boom and after a home glut, including large numbers of luxury apartments without buyers. The economic recession affecting almost all sectors has indeed made the property market slowdown more difficult to address.
On the issue of data accuracy Sattarian said “statistics suggest that housing prices dropped during a specific period when there were very few housing deals; hence, I believe these figures cannot be considered a reliable indicator of housing market trends.”
