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Shkruar nga Pamfleti
The depopulation of the country due to mass emigration, but also the aggressive expansion of construction have climbed Albania to the top of the world for a problematic indicator.
That of empty apartments. Capital has crossed the data published the data published a month ago by the OECD with those announced by the Population and Housing Census of INSTAT. According to them, it turns out that Albania is today the country with the largest percentage of empty homes in the world.
Percentage of empty dwellings by country
But how did Albania reach this point? Historical INSTAT data shows that the share of vacant housing has been rising since 2001. But the growth appears to have accelerated in the past decade as the country grapples with new waves of mass immigration while construction ramps up at a breakneck pace.
In the 2001 Census, according to INSTAT, the weight of unoccupied dwellings in Albania was only 11.3 percent of the total. In 2011, the figure increased to 21.7 percent, while in the last Census of 2023, the share of empty dwellings reached 32.9 percent. This means that there are currently 356,000 unoccupied apartments in Albania.
The percentage of empty apartments in years
Initially, the large weight of unoccupied dwellings was attributed to emigration abroad, but also to internal migration, i.e. the displacement of the population from the countryside to the city. But the latest INSTAT data show that these are no longer the only reasons. According to INSTAT, the largest share of empty housing is found in buildings and is not individual abandoned housing in the village.
According to INSTAT, currently 40 percent of apartments in buildings are empty, unoccupied. This corresponds to a figure of almost 180 thousand unoccupied apartments. So now, the problem is not the displacement of the population from the countryside to the city, but the emptying of apartments in the cities.
The construction market in Albania presents a situation with many paradoxes. Despite the large stock of empty housing, which has made Albania the world champion in this indicator, the construction sector continues to expand at an alarming rate, especially in Tirana, but also in the coastal areas. While 40 percent of the buildings are empty, multi-story towers continue to rise in Tirana, competing with each other to see which one is the tallest.
And despite this boom in supply, prices continue to rise at an unstoppable pace. For many experts these paradoxes are explained by other factors beyond the legitimate ones. According to them, the construction market recycles and is fed by money that comes from illegal sources, such as drug trafficking, but also rampant corruption. Recently, this phenomenon has started to worry partner countries as well, which are equating the construction boom in Albania more and more with traffic money.
A part of the uninhabited housing stock can also be explained by the purchases of foreigners or citizens, who see construction as an investment opportunity. But such a large weight of empty houses leads Albania to a danger zone. Especially since the construction tango continues. The housing stock is expected to grow even more in the coming years, as the authorities have approved millions of square meters of construction permits and continue to approve with the same intensity./Capitali
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