Iranians Rank Second in Buying Properties in Turkey

IRAN NEWS ECONOMIC DESK

TEHRAN – Minister of Roads and Urban Development says Iranians ranked second in buying homes in Turkey in 2019, adding that major capitals in housing sector have entered other countries and implementation of law for taxing unoccupied residential properties will reduce exodus of some part of this capital to other countries.

Mohammad Eslami on Thursday highlighted some of measures of his ministry for organizing the housing market, claiming that the inflation in the housing sector is mostly because of events in the parallel markets like forex and gold markets and devaluation of national currency.

He added that it is natural that any fluctuation in other markets would have their own impacts on other markets like housing sector.

Eslami added that the government has sustainable plan for helping people to own houses. He then pointed to the statistics regarding trades in the housing sector in the country, saying that the amount of trades in housing sector has declined by 70 percent comparing to the same period last year. He noted that 60 percent of trades in housing sector belongs to the big and luxury houses which is sign of speculation and profiteering in this sector which causes chaos and inflation in the market. He added that trades in the small units and the areas with appropriate prices have smaller share of the trades.

Eslami pointed to some of major actions of the ministry for organizing the rents, adding that the government had never interfered in the housing market in the past.

He also reacted to the threefold or fourfold increase of rents by house owners, adding that this made the government to take action and set ceiling for raising the rents for houses for up to 25 percent in Tehran and the figure is set 20 percent for seven other big cities. He claimed that this decision has its impact on the market and the price of rents is visible and the peace has returned to the market.

On the project of National Housing, he said that the project is on the agenda and the ministry is working on it to increase the capacity of this project for covering more people of the society. He said that 1.6m people have registered for getting houses through the project and the ministry is screening the applicants in order to identify the qualified people for getting houses.