25% of Customers Decide against Buying Real Estate amid COVID-19 Outbreak
25% of customers have changed the mind and decided against buying real estate amid COVID-19 pandemic. However, 9% decided to buy a residential space, while this category did not plan to make this transaction before COVID-19, the study by Area Group on real estate customer expectations and behaviour reads.
“Before COVID-19, 28.6%-37.1% of Georgian citizens planned to buy residential spaces. However, the global pandemic altered the existing reality and the consumer moods changed and the mentioned ratio fell to 22.3% to 15.2%.
In response to the question whether they plan to buy real estate in 2020, 75% answered yes, 25% answered NO. It should be noted that the so-called Bear Investors (9%) appeared on the market who did not plan to buy real estate, but took decision to buy real estate after the pandemic. This decision was supposedly motivated by the beneficial offers by developers’, the study reads.
Under the document, the majority of consumers plans to buy residential spaces (69%), while 19% gives preferences to internal installment schemes of development companies.
The existing environment turned out an obstacle for the majority of customers (78%).
When buying real estate, they named the following key and fundamental reasons: USD exchange rate instability, plunge in incomes and expected slowdown in prices of residential spaces.