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By Alazar Ahmed |
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Relocation Special Quarterly Survey By Alazar Ahmed It took us a cutthroat fight to keep Addis’ status as “Africa’s diplomatic city” from being snatched away by some other countries. It would have been a disgrace in history, had Ethiopia lost this badge of diplomatic success. It demanded all the Prime Minister’s furious intellectual analysis to preserve the capital’s status, along with an offering packages of promises; promises of devotion, investment, beautification, and anything to the promote Addis Ababa. What do all these bring about? Companies, multinationals, philanthropists willing to base their continental representation offices at the capital, good news after the bloody Ethio-Eritrea war, which shoved off investors and smeared the image the nation had built up. Being a diplomatic city has, in turn, drawn expatriates of various nations to the country representing either a country as an attaché or a company as a project officer. According to this survey, licensed real estate agents claim relocation of around a thousand or more expatriates a month by the end of 2004, which is greater by fifty percent than the figure for year 2000. In fact transferring or assigning people in a country needs orientation about the countries laws, living standard, housing, and a lot of new things. Such preamble is required if the person is permitted to live for more than 30 days (in some cases 60). Such movement is taken as relocation. Relocation business is a big and lucrative industry for leasers and marketing intermediaries such as brokerage firms or licensed real estate groups. The incomes generated for leasers and the calculated percentage paid to agents makes both parties gradually prosperous. A comparison of the rent amount of two periods can tell even more. In 1999 and 2000, the minimum cost of rental was around 16000 birr. When the exchange rate to the dollar increases, it is to the advantage of the leasers that the total in birr increases. The foreign exchange value increased to 8.74 from 8.37 birr in some six months. In the same years, most houses were being advertised on average for 23.4 weeks, appreciating the cost of houses as the value was in dollar figures. In contrast, by the end of year 2004, most houses were advertised at most for 12 weeks on average and most of furnished guesthouses were reserved fully for the twelve months of a year. What do all these bunch of numerical value reflect? For the sake of reliability, most houses, which could be rented as office or house, were precluded from being analyzed owing to the reason locals might lease them. Area Expansion Relocation industry normally is a form of business that brings about area expansion. At the 2000 survey most of relocation areas were located at Bole or Old Airport. Currently the area can be any place such as Aware, British Embassy area, French embassy, and so on. The very concept that initiates such kind of expansion relates to expatriates’ preference of a house near their countries embassy. Foreign nationals who are an exception to this are the Chinese and Koreans most of whom are project workers. Some areas are expected to be expensive because of being at the centre of the city business activity and close to thorough security surveillance, good infrastructure. Others demand less amounts owing to their peripheral location. Currently expatriates may take any place in the city. Out of major relocating nationalities, the Chinese take the lion share of expanding to other areas. While the others German, French, British, Swedish rank in descending order respectively. It is true that it is foreign expatriates who experience relocation though the term might be applied for local migration. One should bear in mind that the local culture of relocation is not that much developed and people are not willing to pay amounts of four digits, as there is income and saving problem. Who, then, would rent those houses? It is either business people or expatriates. The houses can be labeled into three groups based on their rental cost: expensive, moderate, or cheap. What real estate agents presume is that furnishing a house or not doesn’t affect the cost of housing. And that is what the survey proves. Much of the price of a house is more dependent on square area, location, disregarding level of furnishing. According to this survey, houses are classified as expensive, moderate, and inexpensive using a price category of below 3000birr, between 3001 and 8000, and above 8001, respectively. Most of the houses at Bole and Old Airport are expensive owing to their location and beautiful compound while others elsewhere are expensive bearing to the compound’s size. But one should not ignore the fact that there are moderate and inexpensive houses at Bole and at the same time expensive houses, even more expensive than Bole, at other places. The amount might vary based not only on the type of lessee an agent serves but also its legitimacy. Legally organized firms claim that the minimum monthly housing cost is a thousand dollars but informal brokers suggest that an individual might rent similar houses for only $230. Terms like expensive or cheap are very subjective and dependent on one’s income. To be continued…
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Wednesday
February 9, 2005
