El real estate boom that our country experienced in the last decade, was marked by restrictions in the exchange market, high inflation, the consequent distrust in the peso as a reserve of value and the low sophistication of many national investors, resulting in an insufficient channeling of savings to the Finance system.
This phenomenon had as a counterpart the so-called investment in bricks, an alternative that even transformed the urban landscape of the most important districts of the country.
The south of the province of Santa Fe is a test case of this phenomenon. Part of the surpluses from the province's soy production boom have been put into construction, especially small units, with the aim of forming an asset that acts as a refuge of value (in a context of high inflation and exchange rate volatility). and/or as a source of additional income via rental
This dynamic has been so noticeable that the appearance of the city of Rosario has been drastically modified by a varied range of real estate projects.
That is to say, although it is true that the boom in the construction sector took place in the main cities of the country, in Rosario, this boom was even more notable due to the more than 5.000.000 m2 that have been created in recent times.
Countries, smart buildings, gated communities, or amenities; They are now words in common use in the language of Rosario, and that were previously on the lips of few.
In any case, this growth in the supply of real estate has not necessarily occurred in a coordinated manner with demand, particularly in those neighborhoods where the mismatch of the real estate market - the differences between the properties offered and those sought, in number of environments - has reached frankly high levels; constituting a structural problem, both for the owners and for those seeking to live there.
To analyze this phenomenon, we have built an indicator called mismatch rate, which measures the differences between properties made available on the market and the requests of those seeking to occupy them, with the aim of quantifying how uncoordinated the supply and demand for properties are.
Suppose that 10 potential tenants are looking for 5 2-room apartments, and another 5 are looking for 3-room apartments, in a neighborhood. If only one-bedroom apartments were offered, then the mismatch rate would be very high. In the case where demand and supply fully coincide, the mismatch rate will be equal to 1.
The question then is how to obtain a measure of demand? In this case, we account for the number of non-duplicated contacts that received the property publications, thus being able to reconstruct the demand curve by property type and neighborhood.
In this way, and conditional on the available database, the following results emerged from the analysis of the supply and demand of apartments in the most dynamic neighborhoods:
In some neighborhoods, the mismatch rate is very significant, evidencing an uncoordinated process of growth in the city.
As can be seen, in the neighborhoods where supply and demand are more decoupled, there is a strong excess supply of smaller units (1 and 2 room units, linked to the real estate boom).
On the other hand, 3-room units are insufficient to meet demand. The bias of new constructions towards smaller units constitutes a housing problem in these neighborhoods.
En Arroyito neighborhood, more than 60% of the properties offered are 2-bedroom units, but only 25% of the demand corresponds to this type of units. In fact, 75% of the demand is concentrated in 3-room units, although only 21% of the supply is of that type, so there would not be enough units for sale to satisfy the demand in said neighborhood.
En Puerto Norte neighborhood, 40% of the apartments offered are 2-room units, but the demand for them is practically zero. This is not the case of the 3-room apartments, which constitute 50% of the supply, but 67% of the demand (slight excess demand).
In general terms, the mismatch rate in this neighborhood shows a clear bias: in this neighborhood the demand for 1 and 2-bedroom units is practically non-existent; It is concentrated in apartments with 3 rooms or more.
In general terms, the following trend is recorded: in the 10 most dynamic neighborhoods of Rosario, the supply of one-room apartments constitutes 1% of the total, while the demand is less than 7%.
That is to say, there is a systematic excess supply for this type of units, regardless of the neighborhood in which it is located. The only exception where the supply and demand for one-bedroom homes was consistent was in the Pichincha neighborhood.
In the rest of the cases, the demand was practically nil.