Khabar Khair (Only Good News) – Fatima Rashad

   Real estate market and investment in housing projects has grown in Aden, southern Yemen, due to the great need for housing, with hundreds of thousands of Yemenis coming to Aden. While investment in other sectors has declined due to the conflict in the country for almost seven years.

    And because hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have moved from rural areas, Aden witnessed the construction of several housing projects to meet this need, which prompted owners of housing projects to compete in providing services to attract the population. Some housing projects have finished initial stage of construction while other areas have already started the second round of reconstruction.

     With increasing demand on this type of investment, real estate market faces a number of challenges, most notably the instability of the local currency against foreign currencies in Yemen, which results in a high property price that doesn’t fit low- income people.

     Mustafa Ali, from a researcher looking for specifications to a realtor., says:  coming back to Yemen made me turn to investing in real estate, where I buy apartments and offer them for sale. The real estate market is now popular and   there is a great and assured demand for it.”

    Mustafa added: “I shifted from buying and selling real estate to direct investment by building towers of housing and shops and offering them for sale.”

    On her part, Ahlam Muhammad (a structural engineer) said: “The goal of housing projects that have spread recently is to arrange randomly structured buildings, and to solve the housing crisis in Aden Governorate, which has worsened after the return of expatriates, and the large number of people coming from other governorates “.

      She added: “housing projects provide a variety of services such as having parks and playgrounds, and those details are forming the foundation of housing projects, as any housing project should have places of entertainment for families and children.”

    Regarding the disadvantages of living on the outskirts of the city, Samar Waheed says: “Although the city provides services related to safety, but still living on the outskirts of the city remains an obstacle if transportations are not available, so whoever live in the new housing project that are built on the outskirts of the cities should have a mean of transportation.”

     As for the prices of apartments in housing projects, they range from 40 thousand dollars for small apartments, to 80 thousand dollars for large apartments, and the price goes up to 100 thousand dollars as the area of ​​​​the property is larger.

   Engineer Adel Raweh emphasized: “Employees find it difficult to buy apartments; This is due to falling in Yemeni currency and foreign currencies appreciation, which made it impossible for the employee to by the apartment, especially since the installment purchase system is no longer in place due to the current situation in the country.

   Umm Khaled (an employee) says: “Before the conflict in Yemen, it was easy to buy an apartment in any housing project, and facilities were available to everyone, especially employees, however today we are facing many obstacles that prevent us from buying an apartment in a housing project.”

     With the growing number of housing projects and the multiplicity of investment in this field, rent prices are very high, and therefore we hear voices demanding reduction in rent and apartment prices in Aden, in line with the salaries of employees, and the restoration of the installments payment system for middle-income people, so that they can have their own houses at affordable prices.