Housing construction in the Liberec region is growing, but demand still significantly exceeds supply. Although hundreds of new flats are being built, especially in the regional city, most of them are sold or reserved before their completion. According to preliminary data from the Czech Statistical Office (CSO), the construction of 232 new flats in the region began in the first quarter, which is 14.3 percent more than in the same period last year.
Although the number of apartment buildings is increasing, especially in Liberec, overall, family houses predominate in the new construction in the region. Of the 232 apartment constructions started, three quarters were in family houses. According to statistics, it is similar in the case of flats, which the builders handed over for use. There were also 232 of them, compared to the same period last year, there were seven percent more flats approved this year. Almost two thirds of the handed over flats were in family houses.
Hundreds of new flats are currently being built in Liberec. While, for example, in the area of the former Assembly Plant in the city center, the builders are already completing the last of the 300 flats, the construction of the first stage of the Nový Perštýn district, which is to offer around 500 flats within a few years, is starting a few hundred meters away. The developer has already offered the first hundred flats of the local Rezidence Kaskády, and in three days all but three flats were reserved or sold. They won’t be moving in until next year.
The construction was delayed during the foundation, the subsoil had to be blown up, but the situation on the construction market is an even bigger problem. “We are facing a large escalation of construction costs by at least 20 percent on almost all items, some even 100 percent, such as iron. Of course, this affects the planning of the next stages, because from the developer’s point of view it is very difficult to control construction costs. Paradoxically there is less of a problem with the sale than the construction itself,” Tomáš Kučera, vice chairman of the board of LIF, to which the land belongs.
In Liberec, it is also being built in Pavlovice, pod Ještědem, as well as in the city center and in the area of former printing works. New projects are also being prepared – a garden town with up to 700 flats should grow on the outskirts of the town in Kunratice in the coming years, up to 4,000 people could find a home in a new district planned by a private investor on the site of the former Textilany. Plans for the construction of houses along May 1 Avenue, which connects the train station with the lower center of Liberec, are also reviving, and hundreds of new flats could be built there, according to Mayor Jaroslav Zámečník (Mayors for the Liberec Region).
Source: CTK
