The construction of buildings apartments is relegating more and more to traditional single-family houses, mainly in Santo Domingo, the National District and Santiagowith 75.3% of the licensed private investment in the sector allocated only for last year to the first properties mentioned.
The Dominican Associations of Home Builders and Promoters (Acoprovi) and Real Estate Agents and Companies (AEI) attribute this growing trend to the scarcity of land for construction in urban centers, which leads to erecting vertical projects that are cheaper for sale.
By 2021, there was an investment of 75,648.1 million pesos for the construction of apartment buildings built by the private sectorInstead, 1,612.2 million pesos were allocated to housing, according to the National Statistics Office (ONE) in its Yearbook of Economic Statistics 2021published last week.
When in 2021 there were 3,517 buildings of apartments under construction with license, only 493 homes were reported.
In that year alone, 1,256 licenses were granted for private construction. 62.26% of these were for the construction of buildings of apartments and 14.97% for housing, reports the ONE when compiling figures from the administrative records of the Plan Processing Department of the Ministry of Public Works and Communications.
Scarce and most expensive houses
“The worldwide trend is to make more and more compact cities, so the way to make compact cities is to densify in height”, he highlights. Jorge Montalvo, president of Acoprovi. “Single-family housing projects require more area, more land to be able to develop.”
In addition, he mentions that building single-family housing projects on the outskirts of the city also implies bringing services to the area, meaning more costs. Alberto Bogaert, president of the AEI, also indicates that the maintenance and security costs of a house can be higher than for an apartment.
In the case of the National District, there is a shortage of large spaces to develop single-family homes, so this type of property is scarce; when it is put up for sale it is more expensive. In addition, sectors that were single-family vocation, were transformed into high-rise housing.
Bogaert cites as an example that an apartment in the Los Cacicazgos sector can cost between 250,000 or 300,000 dollars and a house 600,000 dollars.
Of the total construction area last year, 71.9% was allocated to apartment buildings, with an area of 4,458,155.9 square meters. In general, the number of private sector constructions with licenses was 5,496 for 2021. These were mainly concentrated in: Santo Domingo (49.9%), Santiago (9.4%), Distrito Nacional (8.4%) and Peravia (5.5%). ).
Regarding the type of construction, the report details that 64% were apartment buildings, 10% for the combination of commercial premises and offices, and 9% for homes.
