Housing prices will only continue to rise

There are few areas that have not been particularly affected by the pandemic, and the housing segment is one of them – there the demand exceeds the supply, the price fluctuations were temporary and small, but now it is quite clear that they will only continue to rise. This is what industry experts argue in the special edition of “Dienas Bizness” magazine “Real Estate”, which will reach readers on Tuesday, March 30. In the real estate industry, the pandemic last spring put the brakes on for just a few months, but already in the summer months, activity started to return with various corrections in demand. For example, newer and more spacious housing, private houses or land for their construction in the active Pieriga became relevant. Excerpt from the article Agija Vērdiņa, associate director of real estate consulting company Colliers, says that September was the first record month in transaction activity in the market of new and renovated apartments, and pre-covid indicators have already been recovered in October. In December, developers sold more than 310 new and renovated apartments, which made it possible to exceed the number of apartments sold in 2019 by 14% and to exceed the total value of transactions by 21%. The total amount of transactions in the first-time market in 2020 exceeded 255 million euros. “To be honest, we don’t see the impact of the second wave of Covid-19 on demand at all,” she said. Even the developers, who waited cautiously in the summer, already decided to continue their projects in the autumn and opened reservations. However, optimism and euphoria do not quite reign in the market. “Currently, it is risky to predict whether sales volumes will be higher than last year, but there is a feeling that this year the restriction period will be longer in general, which will accordingly affect various projects, budgets, etc., therefore there is uncertainty. And a little less projects are under construction – it’s about a few percent, but it still affects the number of potential transactions. You can feel the pause of a few months, when no new projects were announced, and they would be the ones that should be put into operation at the end of 2021, but in reality it will happen in 2022,” explains A. Vērdiņa. Evija Dzenīte, head of the Housing Sales Department of the real estate company Latio, concludes that currently the demand in the real estate market is much higher than the real supply. Pierīga is experiencing popularity, but considering that the prices of new properties in Pierīga are very similar to new projects in Riga micro-districts, many choose to be close to Riga.

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