The real estate business has been great in Fallujah since September 2016, when families started returning to their homes after the extremists were driven out, confirms Nabil Ibrahim al-Issawi, 50, owner of a real estate agency.
“People came back and made big decisions,” al-Issawi explains. “I keep getting calls from friends and customers asking me to sell their property, even though they are well aware they will only get half the value of the building if they sell now.”
“The cities that have been liberated have lost all of the things that made them attractive in the first place,” he continues. “Doctors don’t want to go back, schools have been destroyed and the infrastructure and state services are not back yet either.”
Without giving away his clients’ names, al-Issawi says that one wealthy local spent IQD1 billion and bought five houses and 13 pieces of residential land through his office in the past three months. “And there are many others who have found investment opportunities,” he adds.
The real estate business is thriving, Abdul Hamid al-Hadithi, a legal adviser in the province’s property registration office, agrees. Property is changing hands a lot at the moment and particularly in Anbar’s two biggest cities, Fallujah and Ramadi.
“It’s hard to say whether it’s an ongoing trend though,” he cautions. Statistics from various transactions have yet to be processed.
the same happens in KRG , only for different reasons , all activities stopped , so the real estate boom , house in Italian village 2 gone down from 200 thousand USD to less than 130 thousand USD, as it showed up that it was over estimated ( including 5 million USD in bribes
forced on investors by local elite politicians ) , those from ANBAR lived mostly in ERBIL , found out that it is safe place , so selling there house in ANBAR can buy better houses in ERBIL , the cities in ِAnbar , SPECIALLY IN RAMADI is volatile, too much corruption , still hard line sunnies work for ISIL, so population do not feel safe , even they were humiliated by ISIL , but keep some kind of affection for them , specially in FALUJA .
Anyway if you visit ERBIL ,you shall see for yourself no less than 10000 house empty , italisn village 1 no less than half of houses are empty , rent gone down from 2300 USD per month to 1200 USD , in italian village 2 rent gone down from 1800 USD per month to 700 USD, inside ERBIL i rentd 2 story house for 300 hundred thousand dinars , before it was rented for 600 thousend dinars .
On the other side politicians who robbed the country build new lavish villas , purchase more abroad .