Construction of apartments in BiH in the past five years has almost halved. Last year, 1.872 apartments were built in total, which is by 49 percent less than in 2010, when the number of built apartments amounted to 3.669. Thus, according to the Agency for Statistics of BiH, the number of square meters of the newly constructed residential space has almost significantly dropped.
Apartments built last year had a total surface of 105.326 square meters, which is almost twice less than in 2010, when they covered 196.276 square meters.
“The purchase power of the populations has dropped and people do not have means to buy apartments. It is questionable when those 1.800 apartments built last year will be sold. Buyers are not interested, and therefore the investors do not have anyone to sell the apartments to,” stated Dragana Vrabičić, president of the Union of Construction and Residential-Utility Activities of Republika Srpska.
Dženana Hodžić, secretary of the Association for Construction and Construction Materials Industry within the Chamber of Commerce of the FBiH, pointed out that construction cannot be singled out from the social-political whole in BiH.
Furthermore, Hodžić highlighted that social strata in BiH are quite accentuated, which directly reflects on the real estate market.
“Residential units in central parts of the city are mostly being sold at high prices even during the construction. In peripheral areas of the city, residential construction has mostly stopped, precisely because the focus groups which purchase apartments in these areas are mostly young people, those who are buying their apartment for the first time, and the like,” Hodžić said.
According to the Agency for Statistics of BiH, the number of finished apartments in 2015 was by 23.3 percent less than in 2014.
(Source: novovrijeme.ba)
