Morocco’s Real Estate Market Surges: Prices Up 1.8%, Transactions Soar 52% in Q1 2021

The increase in the IPAI in the first quarter of 2021 is mainly due to the increase in residential assets of 1.2% and land and commercial assets of 2.9%, BAM and ANCFCC said in this note on the overall trend of the real estate market in Q1-2021. As for the number of transactions, it recorded a 52% increase, i.e. a 42.4% increase for residential, 76.1% for land and 73.5% for commercial properties.

Classified by asset category, residential prices rose by 1.2%, mainly with increases in apartment prices of 0.9%, house prices of 1.8% and villa prices of 4.6%. Sales, on the other hand, show an increase of 42.4%, with improvements of 42.3% for apartments, 38.3% for houses and 59.9% for villas. For land, land prices rose by 2.9% year-on-year, while transactions jumped by 76.1%. In addition, quarter-on-quarter, prices were almost stable in Rabat and Casablanca, rose by 3.5% in Marrakech and fell by 1.2% in Tangier.

It should be noted that the IPAI is calculated using the repeat sales method, which can solve the problem of heterogeneity of real estate assets. But the method is only interested in properties that have been the subject of at least two transactions during the period concerned, BAM and ANCFCC specified.