Luxury housing booms in Kabul amid peace in Afghanistan

KABUL

Men walk through a luxury house in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Sept. 23, 2024.

In a town that has been through it all and is clawing its way back, a man named Omidullah is looking to hit paydirt.

The Kabul real estate agent is selling a nine-bedroom, nine-bath, white-and-gold villa in the Afghan capital. On the roof's gable, glittering Arabic script tempts buyers and brokers with the word “mashallah” — "God has willed it.”

The villa is listed at $450,000, a startling number in a country where more than half of the population relies on humanitarian aid to survive, most Afghans don’t have bank accounts , and mortgages are rare. Yet the offers are coming in.

“It’s a myth that Afghans don’t have money,” Omidullah said. “We have very big businessmen who have big businesses abroad. There are houses here worth millions of dollars.”

In Kabul, a curious thing is happening to fuel the high-end real estate market. Peace, it seems, is driving up property prices.

People who spent years living and working abroad are returning home, keen to take advantage of the country’s much-improved security and stability after decades of war, destruction and infrastructure decay.

They include Afghans escaping deportation campaigns in Iran and Pakistan who are taking their cash with them.

Mortgages are rare because banks don’t have the deposits to facilitate lending. Afghans buy in cash or use the “geerawi option” — when someone provides a fixed sum to a landlord in return for living on his property and staying there until the landlord returns the money.

People were afraid to invest in Kabul before the Taliban takeover , according to another real estate agent, Ghulam Mohammed Haqdoost. But the country’s rulers have created better conditions for the property market in more ways than one.

The city is less violent since the Taliban transitioned from insurgency to authority and foreign forces withdrew, although armored vehicles, checkpoints and militarized compounds remain common sights.

The Taliban, sticklers for an intricate bureaucracy, have pledged to stamp out corruption and regulate legal and commercial matters. That means no more dealing with warlords or bribing local officials for land purchases or construction projects.

Haqdoost is happy with how easily and quickly things are getting done under the new administration.

“House prices have risen by almost 40 percent,” he said. “In the last three years, we have sold almost 400 properties. It wasn’t like that before.”

Haqdoost’s client base is mostly overseas, and their international tastes are influencing interiors.

They want novelties like dining tables and beds. In Afghanistan, it’s the norm for people to sleep and eat on the floor. It’s also the diaspora seeking out purpose-built apartment blocks offering amenities like central heating, double-pane windows and elevators.

To make the city more attractive and livable, the municipal authority is busy building and repairing roads, installing streetlights, planting trees and removing trash. It’s also developing plans to promote affordable housing and encourage home ownership.