Housing in Tehran: 87% decrease in transactions, less than 1% decrease in prices

According to new statistics from the Iranian Ministry of Roads and Urban Development, housing purchases and sales in Tehran decreased by 87 percent in April of this year compared to the previous month.

The average price per square meter of a residential unit in Tehran in April of this year also reached 15,545,000 Tomans, a decrease of 72 percent compared to the previous month.

According to Tasnim News Agency, based on these official statistics, in the first month of this year, 1,096 contracts were registered in the real estate system, which represents an 87 percent decrease compared to 9,077 contracts in March of last year.

The highest average price of Tehran's 22 districts was in District 1 at 32 million Tomans per square meter, and the lowest average price was in District 18 at 7 million and 118 thousand Tomans per square meter.

According to this report, the largest price decrease between March 2019 and the end of April 2020, with a decrease of about 16 percent, occurred in District 12 of Tehran.

In this area, the average price per square meter of a residential unit in March last year was 9 million 205 thousand tomans, which rose to 7 million 714 thousand tomans in April this year.

The drop in housing prices in Tehran by less than one percent occurred last fall, after the threefold increase in gasoline prices and the devaluation of the rial, housing prices in Tehran's first district, known as Shemiran, rose by 34 percent, which had a significant impact on the average price of the entire housing market in Tehran.

According to statistics from the Statistical Center of Iran, housing prices in Tehran increased by about seven percent in December of last year, but according to a field report, house prices in District 1 of Tehran increased by eight million tomans per square meter, reaching an average of 31 million tomans per square meter.

At that time, the reason for the jump in housing prices in Tehran was cited as "a periodic attack by speculators on the housing market" following a threefold increase in gasoline prices and an increase in the value of the currency.

Following the increase in inflation and the devaluation of the rial, most of the transactions people make in Iran are simply in the form of converting assets from rials to housing, dollars, gold, or stocks.

Source: Radio Farda