The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has launched a property price index for Cyprus which is aimed at making the real estate market more transparent.
It will track property and rental prices across all districts and monitor changes in residential properties, offices, high street retail and warehouses and be published quarterly.The first one just published will provide a base index on which all future changes in price and rental levels will be benchmarked.
The highest prices for high street retail, offices, and warehouses are recorded in the bigger urban centres of Nicosia and Limassol. Warehouses are 18% more expensive in Limassol, probably due to it having the island’s main commercial port.
House and apartment prices are spread evenly across the island, with an average price of €1,865 per square meter for apartments and of €2,001 for houses. The low standard deviation across all cities of only 9% and 10% respectively shows that, excluding tourist areas and areas of special value, the vast majority of homes for locals are evenly priced.
‘These low yields may show that rents are being kept artificially low by the tendency of companies to occupy properties with alternative uses, mainly residential, in order to minimise their costs. An alternative explanation is that property prices are too high due to the lack of land supply and the price boom of the past few years,’ the report adds.
The RICS Cyprus Property Price Index monitors the urban centres of Nicosia, Limassol, Larnaca, Paphos and Paralimni-Famagusta. The Index only tracks prices in Republic of Cyprus’ government controlled area and not in the occupied North.
