In 2019, 0.6 square meters per one resident of Kazakhstan m. of new housing. According to UN standards, the indicator must be brought up to at least 1 square meter of housing per person. What tools and mechanisms should Kazakhstan apply to achieve this indicator?
Urbanization of the population is one of the key indicators of the socio-economic development of the country. An increase in the share of the urban population allows the formation of a modern post-industrial economy in the country, characterized by a high political, financial, social and cultural level of society. In most countries of the world, there is a steady trend towards urbanization – in developed countries, almost 75% of the population lives in cities.
In Kazakhstan, the level of urbanization is quite low – as of December 1, 2019, only 58.2% of the population lives in cities. Moreover, as practice shows, an increase in the urban population by 1% ensures a GDP growth of 0.12%.
One of the key factors in the growth of urbanization is the provision and accessibility of housing for the population. According to UN standards, at least 1 square meter of housing per person is required to be erected annually in the country. However, in 2019, only 0.6 square meters per inhabitant. m. of new housing.
So, as of December 1, 2019, the area of commissioned housing amounted to 11.1 million square meters. Of the total number of residential buildings, 38 516 individual houses, 872 multi-apartment buildings were commissioned, 95.8 thousand apartments were built.
It is noteworthy that in the cities of Almaty (1.9 million sq. M.), Nur-Sultan (1.4 million sq. M.) And Mangistau (1 million sq. M.), The largest amount of housing space was commissioned and the largest housing growth is in Turkestan (an increase of 32.1%), North Kazakhstan (an increase of 23.8%) and Almaty (an increase of 22.6%) of the region.
In total, about 1.3 trillion tenge was allocated for housing construction, which is 23.1% more than in 2018. However, the volume of commissioned space increased by only 0.8%, which is associated both with an increase in prices per square meter and with an increase in demand for 2-, 3-room apartments of small area.
The growth in the cost of new housing in 2019 compared to the previous year amounted to 6.4%, and the secondary – 6.2%. As a result, 1 square. m. of new housing on average is estimated at 293.5 thousand tenge. In general, an increase in the cost of housing has been continuously observed since 2011 with an average annual rate of 7%. However, only in 2016 did prices fall after critically high growth amid the effects of the global crisis.
Despite the increase in prices on the housing market, for the eleven months of 2019, the number of transactions in the sale of housing increased by 20.4% compared to 2018 and amounted to 292.3 thousand operations.
Traditionally, most of the deals were made in the cities of Almaty, Nur-Sultan and the Karaganda region. Obviously, the reason for this was the implementation of state mortgage lending programs in the country.
The volume of mortgage loans as of December 1, 2019 increased by 35% compared to the previous year and reached 1.7 trillion tenge. High demand for mortgages is observed in the cities of Nur-Sultan (472.4 billion tenge), Almaty (422.3 billion tenge) and in the East Kazakhstan region (101.3 billion tenge).
Government programs provide a comprehensive mechanism for using state support tools for housing and the acquisition of preferential housing. At the same time, regular improvement of programs increases their effectiveness and relevance. For example, the removed restriction on the purchase of secondary housing, increased the number of mortgage loans by 12%.