TEHRAN- Head of Iran’s Budget and Planning Organization (BPO) Mohammad Baqer Nobakht said that the government is constructing 100,000 residential units for the poor and less privileged people.

Making the remarks during a meeting with local officials in a visit to the southwestern province of Ilam on Friday, Nobakht said that the housing project is being carried out by Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation and Housing Foundation of Islamic Revolution in collaboration with the BPO.

Back in August 2019, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani officially launched the government’s National Housing Action Plan, by inaugurating a project for constructing 110,000 affordable housing units across the country.

The National Housing Action Plan aims to construct 400,000 small and medium-size apartments (70-100 square meters in size) across the country and particularly in Tehran, where housing prices have risen most sharply.

Nearly half of the total number of the said homes will be constructed in Tehran’s suburban “new towns” such as Parand and Pardis, respectively located in the west and east of the city.

According to Iran's Minister for Transport and Urban Development Mohammad Eslami, the government plans to complete the new units by April 2021.

While the ministry will provide the land for the new developments, it will only supervise construction, enlisting private sector construction firms who will bid for contracts that entitle them to receive state loans and subsidized building materials. 

As reported, the government’s investment in construction will help create new jobs across the country and is expected to boost wages among laborers.

Providing housing to low-income families could also help alleviate economic hardship, especially if the government’s assistance can help inflation-hit renters become homeowners.

Last week, a member of the Iranian Parliament (Majlis) Civil Committee said that the drastic and unprecedented rise in housing prices in recent months is going to lead the housing market to a recession in the coming months.

“With the dramatic and unprecedented rise in housing prices, the market is expected to enter a recession for at least three to four years in the coming months, but naturally, as the recession intensifies, housing prices will fall by about 10 to 20 percent,” IRIB quoted Mojtaba Yousefi as saying.

Unfortunately, housing prices have risen by about 200 percent in recent months, and this has created many problems for real house buyers, Yousefi said.

“The main problem is that in such a market real buyers cannot afford to buy houses and instead the market has become a playground for brokers and speculators”, he lamented.

According to the official, the housing market trend in Iran has been sinusoidal, meaning that housing prices have risen over a period of time and then the market has entered a recession, however, in the last two years the trend has become contrary to the previous years and the housing prices have been constantly increasing.

MA/MA