Mortgage-backed securities, which experienced unprecedented price hikes during the past few months, even reaching 1,000,000 rials for a 5-million-rial housing loan in May, have lost some value, standing at 780,000 rials, reported ISNA on Friday.
The extension of nuclear negotiations between Tehran and the P5+1 group of major world powers, together with the global drop in oil prices caused concerns in the country's equity market. The dollar exchange rates and the gold prices increased while the Tehran Stock Exchange's main index, TEDPIX, recorded a dramatic fall.
The administration, which was trying to harness the growing downtrend in housing securities market, will now have to deal with keeping the supply/demand balance.
Earlier in spring, mortgage securities got so expensive that the officials put restrictions for trade of such bonds in order to eliminate or curb speculative trading. During the period, despite the increase in prices of mortgage securities and the unprecedented stagnation in construction and housing sector, a group of traders at Iran's Farabourse, or over-the-counter (OTC) market, traded such securities for profit.
Between June 2005 (when former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office) and June 2013 (the end of his second term as president), land prices in urban areas grew by 81%.Also in that period, housing prices increased by 220%. Furthermore, the cost of renting an average flat in urban areas rose by 254% in the same period.
Homebuyers, who have not deposited a certain amount of money in Maskan Bank in order to benefit from future mortgages, can buy mortgage securities at the OTC, which costs them some one fifth of the mortgage before the recent fall in the price of securities.
Meanwhile, the high housing prices has made it extremely difficult for people to count only on the housing loans, which averagely account for only 25% of a 12-year-old 50-square-meter apartment in central Tehran.
