Kurdistan is booming. There is hardly a neighbourhood in the main Kurdish towns and cities without building activities going on. Housing, industry, hotels, shopping malls - Kurdistan is building at a speed that is hardly imaginable. Compounds of luxurious apartments are being filled, and I have been told that at the moment some 62.000 units are still in the process of being build in Erbil alone.
This seems to be a process that repeats itself.A process that starts with the sale of housing before it is built, and the reselling of it before it is even finished. Before anyone can move in, most apartments have been sold twice or three time to new owners. I know of apartments that cost around 100.000 dollars when they were still on paper, and are now doing around 250.000. Most owners are not interested in the property to live in it; they see it as an investment. For that reason, many owners do not even bother to rent the place out, and many apartments remain empty.
Those who do rent their property out, ask high rents. They only need to look at the market, which is dominated by companies, to decide on a slightly lower rent than the one asked in other neighbourhoods. This starts the move, as it did from Italian to English Village, and now to the newer apartments of for instance Royal City.
What happens to the older houses, that are left in this game? That is where the bubble comes in. It might be a profitable game to buy and sell housing, but there is always someone who in the end pays the bill. At the moment that is the latest owner of the house that is no longer sell able, as other, newer buildings are more interesting. He is stuck with a building for which he paid a price that was already far too high. He was the poor guy who did not realise he was at the end of the game - as I am sure there are many like him.
Yet the game continues, and housing prices and rents in Erbil are still on the rise. Who can afford a rent like that, you wonder. And: should the government not interfere, as those who the housing projects were planned for, do not at all profit from them. Which means that there is a huge demand for affordable housing, and that in itself again pushes up the prices.

This makes you wonder when this balloon is going to burst. And who is going to suffer - and who to profit. I'd rather be at the side looking in, than in the middle. So if I buy a house, preferably not in Kurdistan, however much this country has got under my skin.
This reaction reached outside this website:
Azad Shekhany (Dean of the college-university at Sulaimany Technical College) wrote:
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