Azerbaijan, Baku, November / Trend, A. Akhundov /
Baku real estate prices remain stable, Nusret Ibragimov, Director General of MBA Group, told Trend on Friday.
"This particularly concerns the residential market where prices decrease or increase slightly, but generally remain stable," Mr Ibragimov said.
However, the same cannot be said about the commercial market, he noted.
"The prices for commercial property have decreased by 10 to 12 per cent over the past year," he added.
As for the housing market, cheap living apartments, that is where the prices are lower than average. The price for a Baku living area which averages $1320 per square metre is the most popular transaction, he noted.
"This is because they are subject to mortgages. The price for such an apartment averages $70, 000," Mr Ibragimov said. Expensive apartments do not sell well.
"There are certain problems related to sale of such apartments with the average price of $170,000. To sell them, it is necessary either to lower the price substantially, or to keep it up for sale for a long time," Mr Ibragimov reported.
The activity at Baku's land market has also slowed down considerably over latest period, he noted.
"Comparative activity observed in the first half of the year has lately descended. This is related to the problem of the registration of newly built apartments and to the expectations that requirements for the build-up of privately owned houses will become simpler," Mr Ibragimov concluded.
Sayad Kerimov, Deputy Head of the Administrative and Military Legal Provisions Department of the Parliament of Azerbaijan, reported earlier that the city planning Code will specify objects, build-up of which requires special permission. The draft Code is being currently examined by Parliament.
"First of all, this concerns matters of the first and second level of construction, i.e. high living buildings. No permission will be required for construction of private dwelling houses. While construction of a private dwelling required permission from the executive power until of late, it will become necessary just to give information about a respective structure, as provided by the new code," Kerimov said.
However this only concerns private houses not higher than three stories or 12 metres, he noted.