Housing prices have risen by 90.9 percent in Iran since October 2017, according to a recent report by the housing department of the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development.
Meanwhile, sales of homes in Tehran fell by 53 percent during the same period. According to the government’s report, 7,017 homes were sold in October in Tehran, a 26.6 percent drop compared to September.
The average price of a home in Tehran was $2,185 per square meter in October, showing a 6.4 percent and a 90.9 percent increase compared to the previous month and September 2017, respectively.
[aesop_image img=”https://kayhanlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/تهران.jpg” panorama=”off” align=”center” lightbox=”on” caption=”Tehran, Iran. Source: Kayhan London” captionposition=”left” revealfx=”off” overlay_revealfx=”off”]
Exorbitant home prices in Tehran and other major Iranian cities have caused a sharp drop in the number of properties sold. Also, many young couples cannot afford to buy or even rent a place in the current market. Some people qualify for mortgages, but in most cases, the loan amount falls short of the listed sale price for a property.
For instance, a young married couple living in Tehran who want to get on the property ladder must show a balance of nearly $29,000 for six months in their bank account before they are qualified to receive a first-time home-buyer loan of equal amount. The couple also has to pay more than $4,000 for the mortgage application fee, which means that the actual cash they receive would be around $24,000. Their savings and loan added together come to $53,000, which is significantly less than what they’d need to buy a 40 square meter one-bedroom apartment in Tehran.
It is clear that the government’s housing programs and loan schemes have not helped people living in major cities to buy homes. House prices have risen between 35 and 85 percent in other big cities around the country in the past year. There are even fewer opportunities for people living in different cities than Tehran to get mortgages.
Translated from Persian by Fardine Hamidi
