Major rise in Kazakhstani housing construction
Published on 28/03/2017
Great news coming from Kazakhstan. Housing construction throughout the country has enjoyed a sharp increase in 2016, the latest industry reports say.
According to financial and analytics portal Finprom.kz, Central Asia’s biggest economy built as many as 89,400 new apartments throughout the last 12 months. This marks a new milestone in Kazakhstan’s residential building sector - it is the highest volume of new apartment units built in any year since Kazakhstan became independent in 1990.
The Kazakhstani housing sector has faced some real troubles over the years. It was teetering on the verge of bankruptcy in the late nineties and early 2000s, when the number of new apartments built annually did not exceed 16,000 units.
An overhaul of Kazakhstan’s mortgage regulations resulted in a mid-2000s upswing in housing construction. Between 2005-2008, 54,000 new apartments were built throughout the country. The global financial crisis also impacted the number of new housing units built in Kazakhstan, but huge government support stopped it from full scale collapse.
Now, state backing for housing construction is heating up. $159 million was invested in capital city Astana’s residential sector alone during January-May 2016. Nearly a million square metres of housing space came onto the Astana market in this period – a quarter more than the same period in 2015.
The private sector is slowly becoming a bigger force in Kazakhstani construction. 10% of new homes built in Astana in 2016 was built by private developers, triple the levels previously constructed by non-government bodies.
Government cash is already resulting in more building activity in the residential sector. January-February 2017 saw 18,000 new apartments built nationwide – an increase of 23% compared with the same period in 2016.
Kazakhstan has some big developments in the pipeline and is ready to investment heavily in residential building projects. $4.7 billion has been allocated for further housing spending from now until 2021 – while the Nurly Zher initiative promises to be even bigger.
The Nurly Zher programme of residential development is poised to completely change the face of Kazakhstani housing construction. It is a pledge to provide housing for 1.5 million Kazakh citizens by 2031, with mortgage rates lowered to 10% to keep prices affordable.
Under the auspices of Nurly Zher, 664,000 10-acre sites have been earmarked as sites for new apartment blocks. 35,000 units will be for rent, while 280,000 apartments will be available to buy via the Kazakhstan Mortgage Company and Kazakhstan House Construction Savings Bank. 521,000 apartments will be set aside for private mortgage lenders.
With significant spending planned, and more building work set to hit the housing sector, residential construction is set to power Kazakhstan’s build and interiors sector throughout the next decade.