Tangier’s Real Estate Crisis: Developers Close Doors as Market Freezes

"The situation is frozen; no sales or purchases," summarizes Mustapha, one of the real estate agents working with a group of companies and developers in the city of Tangier, speaking to Hespress. He paints a catastrophic situation. This year is "catastrophic for the sector, and since the month of Ramadan, we have not recorded any real estate sales in the city," he specified. According to him, he and his partners have seriously considered closing down. The tax audits that have targeted a number of real estate developers in the city and cost them significant amounts, estimated at millions of dirhams, have increased the pressure on this category of entrepreneurs competing in a market that represents a golden goose in the "bride of the North," explained Mustapha.

For the president of the Association of Real Estate Developers of Tangier, the stagnation and decline in the sale of real estate is "a persistent reality that concerns everyone." According to his explanations, the current crisis is a combination of several factors and causes. Among the most important: the rise in the prices of construction materials and land dominated, in the majority of cases, by speculators, in addition to the transformations in the lifestyle of many segments of society and residents, he lists. According to him, the high cost of living has impacted the savings rate of households and disrupted the priorities for many members of the current generations, for whom housing is no longer a priority.

"People now want to live and enjoy their travels, influenced by the era of social networks," he specified, stating that the high cost makes it impossible for many civil servants to acquire housing, due to the transformations and commitments that life and its demands are experiencing. To support his argument, he specifies that the price per square meter in the city center reaches 20,000 dirhams, "which means that an apartment of 120 square meters costs one million four hundred thousand dirhams." And he questions: "What civil servant could afford it?"

Given this reality, the latter calls for joint efforts to find solutions to the causes of these increases.