Egyptian housing sector grows by 16%

The four-day “Next Move” conference, the first large real estate convention in Egypt, opened Wednesday in the Cairo International Convention Centre   “I don’t think you would have seen something like this in Egypta couple years ago,” said Ahmed Badrawi, director of business development at construction company SODIC. “The influence of foreign investors and, generally, the upturn in the market have really raised the bar.” adding  “We started in an era where real estate wasn’t really in Egypt, but it was starting in the Gulf, so I moved,” he said. “But by the time it really got mature in the Gulf, it started growing in Egypt.”

The up beat messages on the convention’s opening day could hardly contrast more with the down beat American and European markets. The Egyptian housing sector grew nearly 16 percent last year according to Business Intelligence Middle East, more than double the country’s general growth.

Demand shows little sign of letting up. State research suggests a current shortage of 2.5 million units, with 350,000 needed to keep up with growing demand. And while many decry a widening gulf between rich and poor, real estate talk has shifted to the need to cater to a rising middle class.

“We believe that there’s this new emerging middle class that’s demanding an improved lifestyle, a better product than is currently available in Greater Cairo,” said Badrawi. “The yuppie class, for want of a better word.”

Many Gulf-owned companies are among the biggest players in the current market, often lured from their homelands’ flooded housing markets by cheap desert land and an immense, under-served Egyptian population.

The over riding message was that whatever problems the wider region may face, the real estate wave is riding high, with the peak yet to come. Over the next five to seven years, Badrawi said he expects the satellite cities of Sixth of October and New Cairo to swell to 2.5 to 3 million people, “which,” he noted, “is the size of most major European cities and larger than most of the Gulf states.”