The cost of housing is increasingly far from the possibilities of the pocket of the Mexican. The national value of a property acquired with a mortgage is 1.5 million pesos on average, according to the index for the second quarter of the year Federal Mortgage Society (SHF). In 2019, during the same period, the cost was one million pesos, that is, in three years it grew 38%, more than a third.
This increase has accelerated in the last year due to elements such as inflation, which had a variation of 12% in the construction sector during September. Consequently, less social and economic sector housing is built, since costs cannot be kept low.
“It is a very serious problem in all regions of the country. We have a prevailing need for 3.5 million people with authorized credits in Infonavit, but it is not being produced (affordable housing). The demand is there and the offer has not been made in accordance with the needs, this is playing several problems such as inflation”, says Luis Alberto Gómez Monroy, president of the National Chamber of the Housing Development and Promotion Industry (Canadevi).
This and other elements are what have been combined so that people in the country aspire to
1. Housing goes from being a commodity to a human right
For Lilia Aguilar, deputy for Oaxaca, when access to housing was declared a human right, companies stopped having an interest in building it, “because before we had very expensive social housing production, with average costs. A house of 40 square meters cost between 300,000 and 400,000 pesos, but the National Housing Commission (Conavi) began to prohibit those standards”, he considers.
2. Cost of land and real estate speculation
Land has acquired high prices for two elements. The first, in saturated cities like Mexico City due to demand, and the second, due to speculation, especially in areas around the urbanized ones.
“Mainly in the Yucatan peninsula and in the north of the country, many construction companies stopped building and began to buy land to wait for prices to rise,” explains the president of the Housing Commission.
In Mérida, for example, lots outside the urban area are being acquired with the expectation that at some point they will be reached by services and connectivity.
3. Term of subsidies.
Before, Sedatu and Conavi provided support so that people could complement their down payment and credit if they wanted to access low-cost housing.
“In 2018 we had subsidies that supported the strengthening of the purchase of a house, but in 2019 it ended and added to that, the purchases of land consolidation caused the land that fell in those polygons to increase excessively”, which caused his construction was high and the costs would continue to be inaccessible to the population, explained Luis Alberto Gómez.
4. Material price inflation
Construction has had higher inflation than the rest of the industries. In September of this year it was reported around 12%, while at the national level it was 8.7%. This is derived from the increase in construction materials and the rental of machinery, mainly.
From 2021 to 2022 the cost of products such as wire rod and steel grew from 30% to 40%. The labor force also had an increase of 6%.
