Cypriots are being priced out of the property market in Limassol by wealthy foreigners, Agence-France Presse notes in a reportage.
Property prices in the coastal city have skyrocketed, driven by Israeli investment, and Russian and Ukrainian firms that are moving to Cyprus to flee the war.
“Nothing is accessible for Cypriots anymore. The owners know this, and they are only looking for foreigners,” Eleni Constantinidou, who is in her 30s, told AFP.
Unable to find an affordable place in her home town, she was forced to move in with her parents, husband and child in tow.
In 2016, it cost her 400 euros to rent a beachfront apartment in Limassol, while today a two-bedroom apartment could go for more than 1,500 euros.
By comparison, in Nicosia, a two-bedroom apartment can still be rented for around 650 euros a month.
War in Ukraine causing tech companies to move headquarters to Cyprus
Since February 2022, many fintech companies began leaving Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, opting to settle in Limassol, attracted by the sea and favourable tax environment.
In some cases, multiple hundreds or even thousands of high-income tech workers followed their companies to Cyprus.
Limassol mayor Nicos Nicolaides estimated that more than 10,000 Ukrainians have moved to Limassol since the war.
Dmitri Leonov, who works for a fintech company and relocated to Cyprus from Moscow before the invasion, told AFP that the average salary in the sector is 5,000 euros.
“So, for them, paying 1,500 euros for rent is not a problem,” he told AFP, “It had a quite deep impact on the real estate market.”
Rent in Limassol has surged by 23 per cent in a single year, according to Ask WiRe, a Cypriot real estate market analytics startup.
“We’ve seen a lot of apartments being constructed to be sold for around half a million to 700,000 euros,” Pavlos Loizou, founder of Ask WiRe, told AFP.
Behind such big-money projects are often foreign investors, “notably Israelis”, he said.
According to real estate expert Antonis Loizou, 4,123 properties in Cyprus were sold to foreigners in 2022, up from 2,432 in 2020.
The only solution, according to Limassol mayor Nicolaides, is to build social housing.“We don’t want Limassol to become a city where only white-collar workers can live,” he told AFP.
“For Cypriots, it’s heartbreaking to think that they can’t live where they were born.”
Source: (Agence-France Presse. Original story written by Anais Llobet)