PRESS: argentinian real estate market
Posted on Lunes, febrero 08 @ 10:33:43 ARST by redactor |
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Buenos Aires real estate market recovering from worst year in a decade
The metropolitan Buenos Aires real estate market closed 2009 as the worst in the last ten years with the number of registered sales below the 2001 level. The good news however is that for the first time since the last quarter of 2008, December registered the first year-on-year advance.
According to the Real Estate Registry from the City of Buenos Aires in 2009 the total number of sales registered reached 75.950 which represent a 21.8% drop compared to 2008.
Reporte Inmobiliario, a real estate market publication points out that the decline was not so severe in the second half of 2009, since by mid year the fall was closer to 30%, which is ten points more than the end of the year twelve-month drop. Furthermore following ten months of negative data, last December for the first time showed a year-on-year 6% increase in the number of operations.
“From a real estate point of view 2009 ended less bad than expected. If the tendency of the first half would have sustained, 2009 would have ended with less than 60.000 registered sales (in the City of Buenos Aires)” pointed out José Rozados, head of Reporte Inmobiliario. Things were not much difference in the province of Buenos Aires during the last twelve months with a total number of 105.638 registered real estate operations, which represents a fall of 24.9% compared to the previous year. As in Buenos Aires City the situation begun to improve in the second half of the year, since until June the fall was ranging 35%.
However mortgages suffered most according to Reporte Inmobiliario. The number dropped by 37.2% in the 2009 and so did the ratio between mortgages and registered sales: from 7.8% in 2008 to 6.3% in 2009. Another indicator of a bad year was the number of new projects. In Buenos Aires City new projects and expansion totalled 1.7 million square metres, which means a 34.7% fall compared to 2008.
Similarly three neighbourhoods concentrate the majority of new projects, with one of them (Palermo) absorbing 11% of the total which is 200.918 square metres, but even 42.3% below 2008. Two areas in the city which contrary to the rest had an exceptional showing multiplying several times the area to be constructed “can only be attributed to two mega projects, and not to a surge in local demand”, said Jose Rozados.
Nevertheless Reporte Inmobiliario indicates that less activity in registered sales and mortgages did not mean a fall in property prices, houses or land. “Is spite of less activity, property values remained overall in a plateau, basically because there are not many alternatives to investing in bricks and there was no hurry to sell”, said Jose Rozados.
SOURCE: MercoPress - South Atlantic News Agency - January 26th 2010
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