Calm Housing Market Forecast for Tehran in Fiscal H2

The Iranian housing sector, which has just entered a pre-boom phase after a five-year recession, will not register a notable fluctuation in home prices in the second half of the current fiscal year to March 2018, a board member of Bank Maskan, the agent bank of the housing sector, said.

“Not increase in prices higher than the general inflation rate [of around 10%] is predicted,” Abolqasem Rahimi Anaraki also told ILNA.

Hesam Oqbaei, the head of Tehran Association of Realtors, is of the same belief and projects price hikes of not more than 10% for residential units in the coming six months.

However, he conceded that “prediction is hard in the Iranian economy so we cannot speak with complete certainty about any price fluctuation in the housing sector”.

However, the official said that in the second half of the year, “we can surely see an increase in the number of real-estate residential deals to a certain degree, as more liquidity and mortgage loans are injected into the market”.

As Anaraki outlined, current applicants in the housing sector are those who have had their purchasing power boosted by recent bank loans.

But as it has become known for a while, this demand is for smaller and more affordable residential units.

“The recession in luxury apartment markets still persists,” Bank Maskan’s board member said.

According to Oqbaei, in the first three weeks of the current Iranian month ending Oct. 13, a total of 9,382 housing sales were registered in Tehran while the number of rental deals stood at 9,586, which does not indicate a significant change from the corresponding period of last year.

Across the country, a total of 29,054 home sales deals and 32,372 rental deals were registered.