Estonian real estate market starting to calm down
Price levels on the Estonian real estate market are stabilizing and the fears of potential buyers that there will be nothing left to buy soon are starting to ease, Peep Sooman, board member of real estate agency Pindi Kinnisvara, said on Friday.
He said that in a single month, close to 900 new apartments were put on the market in Harju County and also the numbers of second-hand apartments available for sale have started to grow.
Sooman said that the scary messages that started to spread in the first months of the year, which suggested that there will not be apartments left for everyone by the autumn, were a good example of how wishful thinking and rumors can drive market participants completely crazy in the short term.
It all snowballed, and "in the end we got to a situation where every second household thought there was no better time to buy real estate - that's how prices went up," Sooman said.
He said that those in the know, who are working on the real estate market every day, knew already in winter that supply will start to grow in the spring and in summer, which in fact did happen, and it should be clear to all market participants by now that there will be more offers still around in the fall than there are now.
Sooman said that the question, rather, is whether prices can fall back quickly.
"As long as demand persists, we are still talking about the market getting back into balance, there is no reason to fear a reduction in prices. But to fear that in the autumn properties will cost 50 percent more and there will be one apartment on offer per ten buyers - no and again no, we will not see such a thing," Sooman added.
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Editor: Helen Wright