According to the Orders of Engineers in Beirut and the North, the number of permits rose by 14.50% year-on-year (y-o-y) to 14,380 during the first 10 months of 2016, versus 12,559 during the same period in 2015.
In details, the number of permits in the North Region rose from 1,386 by October 2015 to 2,441 by October 2016, which proves the positive impact of the stable security situation on the construction activity in the area. As such, the region’s share of total construction permits issued increased from 11% by October 2015 to 17% by October 2016.
On a different note, data revealed that investors’ preferences are shifting towards smaller construction areas, where the construction area authorized by permits (CAP) dropped from 10.07M sqm by October 2015 to 9.88M sqm by October 2016. Thus, the average area per transaction fell from 800sqm/permit by October 2015 to 687sqm/permit by October 2016.
Moreover, and besides the North region, the largest shares of issued permits were concentrated in Mount Lebanon, South Lebanon, and Nabatiye with 5,162 permits (35.90% of the total), 2,754 permits (19.15% of the total) and 2,009 permits (13.97% of the total), respectively.
Number of Construction Permits by October
Source: Orders of Engineers in Beirut & Tripoli