Prices of apartments in Skopje – Macedonia’s main real-estate market – have gone up by 12.4 percent over the past year, the Central Bank (NBRM) informed today. The real-estate market has been largely dormant for years, but is now heating up, along with the rise in inflation and the spike in real-estate prices elsewhere in the Balkan capitals. NBRM notes that there is an annual increase in mortgages of 15.8 percent.

The rise in prices comes despite the fact that there is a very strong push for new construction. There were 250 building permits issued in March, and of them 138 were for high-rises.