The state turned into a strong competitor to companies that plan to work in the New Administrative Capital by implementing residential units and is preparing to sell at prices difficult for developers to compete, according to chairperson of Al Ahly for Real Estate Development, Hussein Sabbour.
In a conference held Thursday at TREEX real estate exhibition, Sabbour said that there is no demand for renting residential units as before, and the preference of citizens now in the real estate market is to own units.
Sabbour added that the demand for new cities reaches 300,000 units, and there is a great demand for real estate as Egypt is attractive climate for real estate investment because of the stability of the environment.
“The more you build, the more you sell, but it must be in high quality,” Sabbour said.
From his part, a member in the parliament’s Housing Committee, Mohamed Abdel Ghany, said that the parliament is discussing legislation related to the real estate sector include the real estate development law, besides the law dealing with building violations.
Abdel Ghany added that the discussion regarding the law dealing with building violations has been completed in preparation for its presentation to the general session of the parliament, in addition to amendments in the law of tenders and auctions and finally the law of rental relationship.
He addressed the challenges that face the sector, highlighting the high cost of the construction process, in light of the high prices of raw materials. Furthermore, there is a challenge with the low purchasing power of citizens.
Mohamed El Dahshory, chairperson of the Thika Company, the organiser of TREEX 2017, said that there are challenges facing the real estate sector following the economic reform measures taken by the government, which require dealing differently with the market data to ensure the maintenance of the strength of the sector and attractiveness of foreign investment, especially from Arabs.
El Dahshory called on the government to offer developers lands at affordable prices.
Lack of connected lands with utilities is the biggest challenge facing small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which get land allocated to individuals in violation of the law because of the non-availability of alternatives, according to the chairperson of Al Ahram For Real Estate Development, Mohamed Taher.
Taher called on the government to allocate plots of lands with suitable sizes for SMEs, which represent a large proportion of the sector and which contribute to achieve a large proportion of development as to enable them to compete and stay in the market
