Davood Beigi-Nejad, the vice president of the Real Estate Union, says that the average rent in Tehran has increased by more than 50 percent, and due to the rise in housing prices, tenants are no longer considering buying homes.
On Sunday, August 18, Beigi-Nejad added that currently, the rental market and the buying and selling of housing are in a state of stagflation.
According to him, “There are generally no buyers in the housing market.”
Previously, the Central Bank of Iran had reported that the rental rates in Tehran and urban areas of the province had increased by 47 percent and 51.6 percent, respectively, in June compared to June 2023.
The Central Bank’s statistical archive shows that while nearly 15,000 homes were sold in Tehran in June 2018, before the US sanctions against Iran were implemented, this figure dropped to less than 4,000 units in June this year.
Since the start of Ebrahim Raisi’s administration, the average price per square meter of housing in Tehran has soared from under 32 million tomans (approximately 534 dollars) to nearly 85 million tomans (approximately 1,417 dollars).
At the beginning of his term, Ebrahim Raisi’s government promised to build one million housing units annually; however, on April 13, Mohammadreza Rezaei Kochi, the regime’s head of the Parliamentary Commission on Construction, announced that the progress of the “National Housing Movement” plan had stalled at 25 percent, and only a “very small portion” of the government housing projects had been completed.
He added that what has been delivered is related to the “National Housing Action” project of the previous government.
The vice president of the Real Estate Union also mentioned the approval of a 25 percent cap on rent increases this year, stating that currently, there is no suitable pricing model.
Last year, the government also banned rent increases of more than 25 percent in Tehran, but in practice, rents rose by twice that amount.
Beigi-Nejad says that, as in previous years, no steps have been taken in the housing market to help tenants become homeowners because the pricing is beyond the financial capability of tenants; in other words, the purchasing power of the average tenant has declined, and for this reason, the housing market is in recession, as there are no buyers.
He added that tenants, due to their reduced financial power, are moving from the areas they live in to lower-income neighborhoods.
