Real estate is increasing in value faster than salaries or even the exchange rate of the dollar. Writes OBOZ.UA. This is reported by Kontakty.UA.
The head of the committee on finance, tax, and customs policy, Danilo Hetmantsev, noted this on his Telegram page. The price increase over the past year was 12.7% – the lowest figure in a decade. However, for four consecutive years, prices have risen annually at double-digit rates, which is a rather alarming trend, according to Hetmantsev.
Specifically:
- over the past four years, housing has become more expensive by an average of 67.9%. In dynamics, it has outpaced inflation during the same period (58.1%), the growth of the dollar exchange rate (48.4%), and the real average salary by more than 3.5 times;
- prices in the primary segment rose at an even faster pace last year – by 15.0%, while in the secondary segment – by 11.6%. Nevertheless, no year after 2020 has seen price increases within a clear range, and from 2021 to 2024, primary housing has risen by 68.7%, and secondary housing by 67.3%.
Since the beginning of the full-scale war, the issue of housing affordability has intensified. Millions of square meters of housing have been destroyed, and the estimated cost of damages was assessed at the beginning of last year at 60 billion dollars (this is the largest item of losses due to the war; we expect an updated report from the World Bank, European Commission, and UN "Fourth Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment of Ukraine" RDNA4 soon – there will be even larger figures). The situation with mortgages is complicated, and if we set aside the state program eOselya (under which, however, only 15.1 thousand loans have been issued since October 2022 for a total of less than 24.6 billion UAH) – there's not much to say about it.
"If we look at the scale of the problem I mentioned earlier and the pace of housing price growth – its resolution will take many years," – noted Hetmantsev.
As previously reported by OBOZ.UA, in Ukraine, the property tax in 2025 will have to be paid by all owners of large real estate. "Large" according to the Tax Code means a flat of 60 square meters and a house of 120 square meters. If there is both an apartment and a house, then these two figures are summed (meaning that an area of 180 square meters will be considered large).