Friday 15 March 2013

Property prices rise in Colombia, "no bubble" yet

Property prices rose 11 per cent in Colombia's main cities in 2012 a sector representative said on 14 March, though he rejected warnings given intermittently including by the Central Bank, that prices were starting to balloon. The head of the real estate sector association Fedelonjas, César Augusto Llano, was reported as saying that day that property prices rose in part for an "outbreak of speculation" but also for dearth of building land in places like Bogotá. While cities like Cali and Medellín witnessed price rises below the national average - eight and nine per cent respectively - prices rose 19 per cent in the northern coastal city of Bucaramanga and 12 per cent in Bogotá, RCN La Radio cited him as saying. Prices were described as having risen "like palm trees" in the port of Cartagena de Indias, a World Heritage Site on Colombia's Caribbean coast. RCN cited a local estate agent Rosario Hernández as saying that prices in Cartagena's historical quarter of Cartagena hovered around 10-12 million Colombian pesos per square metre, or roughly 4,200-5,000 euros depending on sectors. Llano separately told RCN radio on 15 March that Cartagena was now "at an international level" in terms of prices and foreign pensioners were among buyers. He observed a "vertiginous" rise in prices in the most expensive parts of the capital Bogotá, where he said certain "projects" were being offered at "historic" prices of some 14 million pesos or a little under 6,000 euros per square metre. This he attributed to "high liquidity, affluence of resources and insufficient land." But he denied a day earlier that a real-estate bubble was taking shape in Colombia. He said indicators showed "stable behaviour" in the macro-economy and "we do not have excess offer, we do not have have very high credit levels and mortgage credit maintains an ordinary growth," Cali's El País reported.

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