Who can afford a beach house on the ‘wicked coast’?
If you are considering getting a beach unit on Egypt’s North Coast and follow the ads, you’ll realize you need to come up with at least 7 million pounds (about $140,000) just to secure the down payment for a few square meters.
According to real estate brokers, the price per square meter in the northwestern coast, now known as the “wicked Sahel” on account of the “wicked prices”, has been rising by 10% annually.
So, who can afford to buy there now? And will the demand continue, or is Egypt facing a real estate bubble on the verge of bursting?
The Summer HQ
The leap in prices for coastal units began after the state created New Alamein City, according to a former official at the Marassi project owned by the UAE’s Emaar.
The official, who asked not to be named, told Al Manassa that the massive infrastructure spending the state poured into New Alamein attracted a new kind of customer to Egypt’s summer resorts—the Gulf buyer—who helped drive up prices on the northwest coast.
In 2017, the government launched New Alamein City, whose 14 km beachfront is as long as Alexandria’s Corniche. The state spent generously on the city’s infrastructure, with the downtown area alone costing about 4 billion pounds (roughly $80 million), intending to make it the government’s summer base.
The promotion of New Alamein coincided with marketing the northwest coast as a destination for non-Egyptian tourists. This was evident in English-language ads for Talaat Moustafa Group’s SouthMED, and in the push to sell the Emirati Ras El-Hekma project in Gulf markets, which drove prices to around 100,000 pounds (about $2,000) per square meter.
Osama Omara, marketing director for a North Coast tourism project, said prices for units between New Alamein and Marsa Matrouh target non-Egyptians, who began buying heavily over the past four years.
The Shopper
“All unit owners on the stretch from west of New Alamein to Matrouh have made profits of up to double what they paid about 10 years ago,” Omara estimated.
Today, chalet prices in some resorts range from 7 million pounds to as much as 40 million ($800,000). Villas can run into the hundreds of millions.
| Resort (developer) | Chalet price (EGP) |
| Hacienda Waters (Palm Hills) | 8.7 - 24.1 million |
| June (Sodic) | 19 - 43 million |
| SouthMED (Talaat Moustafa) | 7.4 - 38.2 million |
But who can afford this?
Ayman Sami, head of JLL Egypt real estate analysts, points to those who bought on long-term installment plans, allowing them to lock in pre-currency devaluation prices.
“Currency devaluations in recent years have sharply increased unit prices, so anyone who bought beforehand has benefited from lower costs,” Sami told Al Manassa.
Since 2022, Egypt’s currency has been devalued several times, fueling high inflation. The most recent sharp drop was in March 2024.
Sami also pointed to Egyptians living abroad as a key target market, since their dollar incomes were unaffected by devaluation. Developers now market directly to them overseas.
The dollar crunch in 2022 and 2023 led some expats to send their money through the black market, but that trend faded after the March 2024 devaluation. Remittances have since grown at record rates this year.
The former Marassi official added that “prominent business families in sectors like steel and cement are among the clientele of North Coast resorts. They have the means to buy.”
Moaz Abdullah, marketing director at a real estate firm, summarized the typical northwest coast buyer as “high-income Egyptians who can pay monthly installments starting at 50,000 pounds (about $1,000), as well as Egyptians living abroad, and foreign and Arab buyers.”
The “good coast”
Owners of units on the so-called “good coast,” stretching from Alexandria to Marina, have also been lucky. The boom along the further west coast has lifted rental prices, according to brokers interviewed by Al Manassa.
In El-Shorouk resort, at 45 km, a broker who asked not to be named said villa rentals now range between 12,000 to 15,000 pounds a night, up from 8,000 to 12,000 last year.
Islam El-Hawary, who brokers units in Marina and Porto Marina, said a common arrangement now is for owners to hand over their units to a broker for the summer season, June to October, in exchange for a lump sum of up to 400,000 pounds (about $8,000) for luxury units that can rent for 7,000 pounds a night.
Such deals were worth about 300,000 pounds last year, El-Hawary said, but rose by 100,000 this summer.
Will the bubble burst?
Despite booming sales and rentals, industry watchers say the sector is showing signs of a sales slowdown, similar to the broader real estate market, which some believe has become an overinflated bubble.
Sami of JLL stressed that real estate in general is experiencing slower sales, including in the Sahel, albeit to a lesser extent. He added that this slowdown does not amount to a recession, predicting that demand will recover as financing improves with interest rates trending lower.
Real estate consultant Mohamed Khattab agreed that the slowdown stems from high prices, which he attributed to “the exchange rate fluctuations in 2023 that allowed many speculators into the market, pushing prices up excessively.”
However, Khattab believes demand for coastal units will remain strong in the long term due to the scarcity of available land in the area.
On the future of the so-called “wicked coast,” one property development consultant predicted it will eventually run out of available units.
“In 10 years, the coast will only be able to offer resales, and this scarcity is what drives the cumulative price increases,” he said.