Economic expert says 8,500 flats sold in Moldova in third quarter of 2019, twice as much against average of last years

Chisinau, 10 October /MOLDPRES/ - Moldova’s citizens brought 8,500 flats in the third quarter of 2019, spending about 270 million euros. This figure is twice higher against the average recorded in the last years, economist Veaceslav Ionita has said.    

According to the expert, while so far, 40 per cent of the apartments have been purchased through mortgage loans, then last summer, the share of flats brought through mortgage decreased by 28 per cent. In other words, “72 per cent of the apartments were bought with money on table – an unprecedented record figure till present.”   

Those who were able to move the market so sharply up can be only Moldovan citizens working abroad, who additionally invested more than 100 million euros for buying apartments in the third quarter of this year. “If we add this to the 170 million euros of average investments per quarter in the last two years, than in the third quarter, we have investments worth about 270 million euros in the sector of procuring flats – a record figure for Moldova,” Ionita noted.   

Veaceslav Ionita also said that the issue on the goal of these record procurements remained open: investments or intention to return home.

Earlier, decision-makers have found out that, after ten years of continuous decrease, Moldova witnessed a slight revival of the price for dwellings in the Chisinau city, where since early 2019 the prices have grown by 2.5 per cent or about 1,000 euros for an apartment of 70 square metres. Despite the insignificant increase of prices, the real estate market is on the rise and the tendency will maintain in continuation. According to the National Statistics Bureau, in the first half of this year, 3,676 dwellings with an area of 271,100 square metres were made available for living, up by 30.3 per cent against the level recorded in the same period of 2018.     

In the first seven months of 2019, commercial banks provided loans for real estate worth about 1.8 billion lei – a value comparable with the credits borrowed by private people during all the 2018 year, according to data by the National Bank of Moldova.