Housing sales are way down

[NewsWhore]

The Dominican Association of Housing Promoters and Builders (Acoprovi) says that housing sales are down 50%. This sort of news would be catastrophic in the United States, but apparently it is going unnoticed in the Dominican Republic. According to Acoprovi spokesperson Jaime Gonzalez, the downturn in housing sales is due to the large increases in the price of re-bar and cement as well as the cost of plumbing and electrical installations. According to the spokesperson, "This has led most new investors or new projects to come to a halt because nobody wants to invest in a sector where there is so much insecurity". According to Gonzalez, housing costs have risen by 20% in recent months. Gonzalez told Diario Libre reporters that sector representatives had met with the Minister of Industry and Commerce in an attempt to try and halt the increasing prices of basic construction supplies. He added that the first step would be to ease import duties on these same materials. According to the Central Bank, 264,000 people currently work in the housing sector, the third largest sector in the Dominican economy.

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