The real estate market, after a short standstill last year, not only rose, but is currently in full swing. They say this in the Construction Directorate of Serbia and add that the demand is higher than the supply, and that sales have been constantly growing since the second half of May 2020. The Association of Serbian Banks adds that the number of taken housing loans has been constantly growing for more than a decade, and that currently their share in the total indebtedness of the population is 40 percent.
While in 2006, banks approved 25,000 housing loans, in 2015, for the first time, their number exceeded 100,000, and today, more than 135,000 loans for the purchase of real estate have been issued on about five million accounts. In March this year, the total debt on housing loans amounted to 4.1 billion euros. That is almost 15 percent more than in the same period last year, and 1.5 percent more than a month earlier.
– The average interest rate is around 2.8 percent, which is more favorable than ever – they say from UBS. – It is important for the client to get an effective interest rate in the bank, which means that all costs are included in it. Estimating the duration of the loan depends on the interest of the buyer, for some it suits a longer repayment period in order to have a lower monthly installment, while someone wants a faster repayment.
The Construction Directorate says that the pandemic did not negatively affect the sale of real estate, and that the recommendations of the NBS on the facilities for the purchase of the first real estate probably influenced the increase in interest.
– After the delay in the realization in March and April last year due to the coronavirus, because the courts, notaries did not work, the market stabilized very quickly and returned to the level before the epidemic – they say in the Construction Directorate of Serbia. – The total result we achieved in the number of sold real estate in 2020 is even slightly better than the results from 2019. This year, the growth trend continued. In the first four months, we sold 270 apartments.
The Construction Directorate of Serbia has built six residential buildings in the settlement of Zemunska Kapija, in which about 1,250 apartments have been sold, and most of them have already been moved in.
– During the summer, we will start the construction of the last residential building A with about 140 apartments. The Directorate is also building a modern residential and business complex “Petica” in Block 63 in New Belgrade. It will have about 300 apartments, which will be on the market from the fall.
The price
The average price of newly built apartments in the Republic of Serbia in the second half of 2020 was 1,350 euros. The prices of apartments in the observed period ranged from 450 euros per square meter in Smederevska Palanka, to 3,300 euros in the Belgrade municipality of Savski Venac, Novosti reports.
