As recently posted on this blog, there was a recent blip upwards in the otherwise generally stagnant level of property prices in Tallinn, at least according to real estate portal kv.ee‘s index of prices. It seems that things have reverted to how they had been during the last months of 2011 however, with the index standing at 62.2 as of today (down from 62.8 last month). This is notwithstanding the fact that more flats and houses seem to have appeared on the market.
According to real estate expert Tõnu Toompark’s blog, this figure stands at some 2.5 per cent lower than the figure this time last year, and has bottomed out, though this doesn’t mean any upturn is imminent just yet.
Since the beginning of last year, successive real estate offers started to be added to the kv.ee portal. This peaked in the summer when the number of offers stood at over 20 000. The number of offers began to fall the following winter, reaching a level of 18 700 at the end of the year. Since then, offers started to grow week on week, and today stand at a level of 19 319.
There has been a number of newly-built developments entering the market, but these are often being snapped up quite quickly, thus not impacting the number of current offers level all that much. In general, demand seems to seasonally lag behing supply somewhat, so the coming spring is likely to bring an upsurge in buying and selling activity; the slump in transaction numbers in winter hasn’t helped existing sales offers to be realised.
The kv.ee index, which commenced on 18 February, 2008 (i.e. this is the date on which the value of the index is calibrated at 100) measures the week on week change in residential real estate prices in Estonia. The data has been measured back anachronistically to 1 January, 2005, when the index stood at an “all time” low of 49.9. The “all time” high came on 7 May, 2007, when it stood at 108. Following the economic downturn of 2008 onwards, the index reached a low point (to date) of 61.4 on two occasions, on 5 September and 27 October, 2010.
Tõnu’s original article (in Estonian) is available here.
Andrew Whyte
Tallinn Property by Goodson & Red
