Citing figures from the Estonain statistics office, Tõnu Toompark has reported on his Adaur blog that the total number of newly constructed residential units compared with the existing housing stock has increased by 0.4 per cent y-o-y, to 2012. The actual area of residential space versus existing stock increased by 0.68 per cent over the same period.
These may not seem like huge figures, but we are talking about increases as compared with the existing stock of course; the figures for the ‘boom’ years were much higher, with an approximately 1.1 per cent increase in numbers of units compared with stock in the peak year of 2007 (and over 1.4 per cent when measuring new developments by area) and at no point during the slump did the figures actually move into negative numbers.
That said, a one per cent increase in new housing over existing stock is required to account for depreciation in that existing housing, according to Tõnu. The magic one per cent figure will allow the maintaining of the quality of housing, or indeed an improvement through refurbishments and renovation work, Tõnu explains.
However, at best, there are only three years so far where that has happened, at least when going on area of residential stock (rather than numbers of units) namely 2007 as we have noted, and the two years either side of that. Thus in general there has been a deterioration in the overall quality of the housing stock over the last few years, when applying this rule, Tõnu notes.
That said, the situation is markedly better than was the case prior to the boom; 10 years ago in 2002 the number of new units compared with housing stock had only risen by 0.18 per cent y-o-y and the figure for area of new residential space had only increased by 0.3 per cent on the existing stock, writes Tõnu.
The original article (in Estonian) is here including a graph of y-o-y figures for ratio of new residential developments (by number and by area) to total stock.
It will be interesting to see if the mini-boom in construction which is taking place at present, and likely to be accompanied with a growth in commercial construction due to a dearth in good office space, will contribute to pushing the ratio of new housing to existing stock closer to the desired one per cent mark.
Andrew Whyte
Tallinn Property by Goodson & Red
