London – Morocco’s property sector is continuing to see steady growth thanks in large part to a strong emphasis on social housing, said the London-based publishing and consulting group, Oxford Business Group (OBG).
“Morocco’s property sector is continuing to see steady growth thanks in large part to a strong emphasis on social housing – a segment that has consistently run a deficit of supply, thereby promising continued expansion in the years to come,” the OBG said in its latest update on Morocco.
Residential property remains the real estate sector’s main driving force, accounting for around 67% of total sales, the same source said, adding that in 2011, prices increased by 3.4% compared to 2010 and the number of units sold on the market was up by 13.6%.
Quoting statistics by Morocco’s central bank, Bank Al Maghrib, for the last quarter of 2011, the OBG said that the volume of transactions in the residential property sector rose by 22.8%, “mainly due to the increase in middle-income and high-end apartment and villa sales. In the last quarter of 2011, villa prices saw a year-on-year (y-o-y) increase of 4.2% and sales rose by 11.3%”.
The country’s housing deficit stood at roughly 608,000 units in 2011, with a significant shortfall in terms of the availability of government-sponsored accommodation, exacerbated in part by the Kingdom’s move to eliminate shantytowns and shift residents into proper housing, OBG adds.
The same source highlighted the “remarkable progress” achieved by the project known as Cities Without Slums (Villes Sans Bidonvilles, VSB), which aims at relocating families from poorer neighbourhoods and place them into new houses in urban areas.
Since the programme’s launch in 2004, an additional 400,000 people have been added to the government’s targets, and according to the Ministry of Housing, 70% of the scheme has been realised so far,” the OBG said, adding that 1.2m households have either been relocated or are currently awaiting the completion of their new homes.
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