The Urban Economics Lab has just released PART I on their research about Confronting the Housing Challenge in Latin America. Their report entitled “Reflections on the Evolution of the Housing Market in Latin America: Realities and Dreams” can be found in the link below, together with two accompanying spreadsheets.
This research has generously been sponsored by Latin American PropTech leader La Haus, who also facilitated access to data and thought leadership in the area.
The report describes the critical factors underpinning housing demand and the current needs in the region, most of them stemming from its past economic and political history. Focusing on the housing markets of Colombia and México, the paper investigates how housing requirements in the future should change depending on the uncertain evolution of the multiple variables that will impact housing markets. The authors benchmark the future demand for housing to its corresponding land requirements. They also benchmark the total investment required in the construction sector to the growth of GDP in México and Colombia. More than 800,000 new housing units may be needed annually in Mexico, requiring an additional one percentage point of GDP in construction. In Colombia, the need is to build about 400,000 annually to eradicate the qualitative deficit and accommodate future growth, implying an additional 0.5 percentage points of GDP in additional construction effort.
