TEHRAN – Iranian market analysts believe that housing prices in the country are expected to decline sharply in the current Iranian calendar year (started on March 21) as the government is seriously pursuing its mass construction programs to provide people with affordable housing.

Reaching a nuclear agreement with the world powers and lifting of the U.S. sanctions is also another factor that is expected to contribute to the declining housing prices in the country in the current year, IRNA reported.

The growth of housing prices in Iran decreased in the last months of the previous year so that the point-to-point inflation of the housing market which had reached nearly 100 percent at the beginning of the year fell to 20 percent by the yearend.

Since then, the market has been stabilizing and as real estate intermediaries told IRNA, if the negotiations on lifting the sanctions reach desirable outcomes, the downward trend of housing prices will continue into the current year and the property market will see a significant drop in prices.

Some experts also believe that if the nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is revived, housing prices will experience their biggest historical drop.

As Mostafa Gholi Khosravi, the head of Iran’s Property Advisers Union, has recently stated, “The housing market is waiting for the results of the [JCPOA] negotiations, and with the positive shock that the agreements bring to the market, sales will increase in the coming months.”

He believes that the market will stabilize towards the buyer and the price will decrease.

Mohammad Sadeq Al-Hosseini, an economist also said that “If the JCPOA is revived, the models predict that housing will have its biggest historical price decline; so that we will experience a 20 to 30 percent reduction in housing prices in large cities and a smaller reduction in prices in small cities.”

Housing prices in Iran rose constantly over the past year due to various internal and external factors.

EF/MA