Stakeholders in the Real Estate industry are confident of growth in their business this year.
Online real estate company Meqasa says it is already beginning to see some signs of improvement.
Speaking to Citi Business News, CEO of Meqasa, Kelvin Nyame said his outfit is hopeful that the progress recorded so far in 2021 will be sustained throughout the year.
“We are already seeing big demand especially in lands, houses; three- and four-bedroom houses for sale. We’ve seen traffic bounce back again in January to 30% growth, so we are expecting more people. The vaccine is out, so we are expecting more people to be able to travel. We expect more content, more content and more property to be built and more investment to come back into the country. We expect the confidence for people to invest in apartments to lease for rental yields also bounce back.”
Last year saw a major dip in business for actors in the real estate industry especially after a boom in 2019 due to the government’s year of return program.
The event caused a lot of people from abroad especially the diaspora to come into the country. This increased the demand for homes both for rent and for purchases.
The sector last year took a hit from the pandemic and recorded a significant decline.
COVID-19 and its associated restrictions prevented a lot of foreign customers from coming into the country.
The impact of the pandemic still lingered on such that even the peak season for business which is the yuletide took a hit.
According to Kelvin Nyame, the just-ended Christmas festivities didn’t yield the expected returns.
“There was a general decrease compared to 2019. That year wasn’t election year and there wasn’t COVID-19 either. There was actually more interest because of the year of return so there were a lot of variables that supported the growth in 2019 as compared to this year. Immediately we entered December, we saw about a 30% drop in demand.”
Things appear to be picking up with the easing of some restrictions and especially due to news of vaccines for the virus.
