Residential real estate in Abidjan: a booming sector that is changing

Greater Abidjan is experiencing a geospatial upheaval in the residential real estate sector with the expansion of the city and the establishment of new construction “hotspots”, driven by the good economic performance of Côte d'Ivoire and sustained population growth.

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The Ivorian economy has doubled in size over the last 10 years. As a result of this growth, the city of Abidjan, the economic heart of Ivory Coast, is experiencing an urban metamorphosis common to several African cities.

In the context of land scarcity in the municipalities of the city of Abidjan, and the increase in urban mobility projects at the gates of Abidjan, buildings are becoming vertical, the peripheral areas (Songon, Bingerville, Grand Bassam, Anyama) of the city are expanding and gentrifying. The peripheries of the city saw their number of inhabitants multiplied by 2.5 between 2014 and 2021.

While, for most players, the attractiveness of the real estate market seems certain, behind this apparent real estate boom, developers are going bankrupt. Homes cannot find buyers, projects planned in the short term drag on while other players are succeeding.

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The demand, although sustained, remains poorly addressed.

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In 2023, Greater Abidjan has a significant housing deficit with a demand for residential housing that is growing every year. The majority of the 1.4 million households in Greater Abidjan want to acquire a home, but only a small proportion of these households have the necessary savings or wage levels required in order to obtain a mortgage from financial institutions under current market conditions.

On the supply side, more than 230 real estate developers received approval in 2023, but the growth in the number of players has not yet allowed the market's production capacity to catch up.

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Three major observations emerge from the changes in supply in recent years:

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• A substantial part of the sector is driven by the informal sector. Nearly ¾ of the offer would be produced by individual developers and the remaining quarter would be produced by the private sector. The production capacity of the Top 20 and the market is estimated through a census of projects carried out over the last 5 years.
• A trend towards the homogenization of the offer of the Abidjan market: same construction locations, same construction locations, same size of projects, same construction targeting the same segments with a risk of saturation at the top of the market and a neglect of the economic and social housing segment*.
• The change in the sophistication of developers: The penetration of international companies with financing and construction techniques increases the average size of promotions. More and more large-scale projects are emerging in the peripheries of the city.

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The rental segment of the residential real estate sector is no exception to the difficulties observed in residential real estate. An upward pressure on rents is observed in all municipalities with a tenfold effect in the most attractive municipalities. A benchmark of rents by neighborhood and type of housing allowed us to project a heatmap of rents in Abidjan and acquisition cost per m2.

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Immobilier Grand Abidjan

Accédez à la heatmap des loyers et les coûts d'acquisition au m² pratiqués en 2023.

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The large number of projects in progress is currently insufficient to fill a growing inventory of latent demand. The difference is of the order of half a million homes. A 10-fold increase in production capacity would be necessary to absorb the growth in this stock.

The intersection between the analysis of supply and demand leads to surprising results, often completely uncorrelated. This undermines the preconceived ideas on the real estate development market, which is in turmoil in the Abidjan capital.

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In this context, the challenge for developers would be to manage to structure a real estate offer that meets the expectations of an emerging banked middle class, which would represent a real source of growth for them.

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‍_{‍*Construction trends were obtained following the consolidation of the results of the benchmarking of +70 promotions currently in progress.}