Land Board: Number of real estate transactions down 30 percent in May
In tota, approximately 3,500 sale and purchase transactions were carried out in the Estonian real estate market in May 2020 which is a 30 percent decrease compared to May 2019, data from the Land Board (maa-amet) shows.
While smaller than usual, the number of real estate transactions carried out in May was higher by 23 percent than in April, indicating that activity on the market is recovering after a decline in April and the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus.
The real estate market was most active in May in Harju County, where nearly 36 percent of all transactions were carried out, followed by Tartu, Ida-Viru, Pärnu and Võru counties. The share of the rest of the counties was below 5 percent.
Even though the numbers of real estate transactions have grown compared with April, the volume of the market has not been restored. There has been an improvement in market activity, yet the deceleration or halting of wage growth and even a reduction in wages in some fields of activity are causing uncertainty on the property market and preventing the restoration of demand to pre-crisis levels, the Land Board said.
The number of apartments sold as dwellings was some 40 percent smaller in May than in the same month in 2019 and the number of transactions declined in all the three main centers: Tallinn, Tartu and Pärnu. At the same time, no significant changes in prices took place and the average price per square meter of dwellings sold in all three cities continued to be higher than at the same time last year.
Statistics on sale and purchase transactions involving apartment ownership put the average price of Tallinn apartments at 2,188 euros per square meter in May - 5 percent higher than in April and 12 percent higher than in May 2019.
In Tartu, the average price per square meter rose 9 percent on month and 21 percent on year to 1,691 euros in May. The average price of Pärnu apartments, 1,518 euros per square meter, rose 25 percent compared with April and 8 percent compared with May 2019.
The average price of apartments is influenced also by an increase in the numbers of transactions involving new apartments, which grew by 6 percent on year across Estonia and 12 percent in the capital city.
The average price of new apartments was €2,422 per square meter across Estonia and €2,794 in Tallinn. The statistics concerning the sales of new apartments is affected at least in part by some of the agreements on sale having been concluded before the coronavirus crisis.
The number of transactions in which pieces of unimproved land changed hands grew 1.5 percent on-year while the number of transactions involving unbuilt land declined 7 percent.
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Editor: Helen Wright