Morocco’s Real Estate Paradox: Soaring Prices Defy Official Data, Crushing Home Ownership Dreams

This blatant contradiction between technical indicators suggesting stability or even stagnation, and a reality marked by a continuous rise in the prices of apartments and houses, leaves room for several interpretations. According to some real estate developers, this continuous increase is explained by the high cost of construction materials and production costs. An argument that is not lacking in cyclical relevance, as increases have been recorded on international markets in recent years. But this economic justification does not convince everyone, as some point to the limitless greed of certain real estate developers, as Hespress warns.

The profit margin, in many residential projects, has turned into a gaping chasm that is not justified by the market, purchasing power, or even the ethical criteria of investment, it is noted. As proof, astronomical prices are practiced in certain cities for apartments classified in the "middle" category, but which reach or exceed the cost of luxury housing in neighboring countries. Thus, the marketing mentality does not recognize the general interest and does not take into account the social reality of hundreds of thousands of young people and families. They are forced to postpone the project of acquiring a home, in a context marked by a structural deficit of supply adapted to purchasing power.

Even the actions implemented to try to reduce the gap, such as the "Housing Support" program launched in 2024, which provides direct assistance to those wishing to acquire a first home, are confronted with the ceiling of prices already too high, due to the price-setting mechanism based on the overvaluation of profit margins rather than on a social vision of housing as a right, and not as a luxury.

Based on these findings, it is urgent to "restore the human dimension to the real estate equation and go beyond the logic of ’selling at all costs’".