Through hell or high inflation: Why does Talaat Moustafa always win?
On the eve of Feb. 1, prominent businessman Hisham Talaat Moustafa appeared in a televised interview with host Amr Adib on MBC Masr, confronting fears of a real estate price bubble with firm certainty: “Prices will not fall.”
By the end of the month, a US-Israeli war on Iran had erupted, then escalated dramatically. The unfolding events seemed, in many ways, to play to the advantage of the owner and managing director of Talaat Moustafa Group (TMG). Expectations now point to a new inflationary wave in housing prices driven by regional instability.
Major developers such as Talaat Moustafa have consolidated a set of policies that enable them to keep property prices elevated in both boom times and crises. This helps explain the confidence behind dismissing any potential price correction—and the oft-repeated claim that real estate prices have not declined over the past 50 years.
Yet, as this model secures profitability for some, housing experts warn it simultaneously locks out vast segments of the population from their right to adequate housing.
No one escaped the slowdown
Media outlets widely circulated Talaat Moustafa’s remarks—delivered with visible intensity, as he pushed back against analysts warning of a looming slowdown and calling for price cuts.
It was not the first time the real estate giant had dismissed talk of a downturn, pointing instead to record annual sales as evidence of resilience.
But a closer reading of the company’s financial data tells a more complex story. Talk of a slowdown is not exaggerated. Sales activity has, in fact, decelerated in recent periods, coinciding with a relative easing of anxiety over fluctuations in the Egyptian pound against the US dollar.
The apparent contradiction between Moustafa’s statements and the company’s figures lies in what the company chooses to emphasize.
Its reports foreground total sales value, which reached 62.5 billion Egyptian pounds (about $1.23 billion) in 2025—a roughly 46% increase compared with 2024. But this figure reflects revenues realized from units contracted in previous years and delivered—fully or partially—in 2025, in addition to income from other activities such as hospitality.
In other words, it is a measure of past performance.
A more immediate indicator of market conditions is the value of new contracts. Here, the picture shifts: contracts fell sharply in 2025 to 302.2 billion pounds (about $5.9 billion), down from 504 billion pounds (about $9.9 billion) the year before, according to company data.
Hazem Hamdi, head of real estate at The Board Consulting, is unequivocal: Talaat Moustafa Group was unable to replicate its previous performance in 2025. “It faced the same market slowdown affecting other companies,” he said.
Hamdi explains that the strong revenues of 2023 and 2024 reflected exceptional conditions, driven by households seeking to protect their savings from high inflation. “With relative exchange-rate stability in recent months, the panic-driven buying wave that dominated the previous two or three years has subsided.”
Mostafa Serag, business planning director at The Board Consulting, agrees that broader market data points to a pronounced slowdown. “In the first nine months of 2025, the number of units offered by the top 10 developers increased by about 50,000 units—just a 3% rise compared with the same period in the previous year. Meanwhile, average unit prices showed virtually no increase compared with 2024.”
Serag adds that the surge in Talaat Moustafa’s contracts—peaking in 2024—was fueled by exceptional projects such as SouthMed, which benefited from its proximity to the Ras El-Hekma development. Buyers anticipated sharp price appreciation there, driven by massive Emirati investments. Indeed, the group announced that contracted unit values in SouthMed alone reached 280 billion pounds (about $5.5 billion) in 2024.
He also notes that the group’s Banan project in Riyadh provided a significant boost to sales—though it does not reflect the underlying dynamics of Egypt’s domestic market.
Prices that do not fall
Faced with clear signs of market deceleration, experts point to several structural reasons behind Talaat Moustafa’s ability to defend high price levels.
Chief among them is the dominance of off-plan sales—a model that binds buyers into long-term contracts, often priced based on projected unit values more than a decade into the future. Under such conditions, prices are structurally insulated from short-term slowdowns.
“Announced contracts represent multi-year contractual values. This effectively defers any potential price correction, making sudden declines less likely compared with markets based on immediate sales,” housing policy researcher Yahia Shawkat explains.
At the same time, Talaat Moustafa and other major developers benefit from strong demand from Egyptians abroad. These inflows help sustain sales during downturns and reduce pressure to cut prices.
Hamdi notes that diaspora demand has risen markedly since 2020, particularly for high-end properties. “The top two consumer segments, where most diaspora purchases are concentrated, used to account for around 10% of total demand before 2020. That share has since climbed to between 40 and 50%.”
Another price surge ahead?
TMG resisted lowering prices during the brief period of exchange-rate stability following the Ras El-Hekma agreement. Now, with renewed inflationary pressures linked to the war, expectations are coalescing around a potential 20% increase in real estate prices.
Serag believes the earlier slowdown may temper the group’s ability to fully capitalize on these conditions, but does not rule out price increases. “Prices may rise, but very cautiously,” he said. “Supply is high relative to demand, and there are currently not enough foreign buyers in Egypt to significantly boost demand.”
One telling indicator of investor confidence is the group’s successful subscription to a new real estate investment fund launched in March, which raised 8 billion pounds (about $157 million) despite the tense geopolitical climate.
For Hamdi, the fund underscores the sector’s continued attractiveness. CI Capital’s participation reflects confidence that real estate assets will generate returns exceeding bank interest rates.
Serag adds that if the war were to escalate and trigger large-scale migration from Gulf countries to Egypt, property prices could rise sharply—though he considers this scenario unlikely for now.
What are we losing?
During his interview, Talaat Moustafa framed sustained high prices as a natural outcome of strong domestic demand. But in reality, the pricing strategies of major developers systematically marginalize large segments of Egyptian society.
Moustafa reiterated a familiar statistic: Egypt sees around 1 million marriages annually. What he did not mention is that the vast majority of these households fall outside the target market for his company’s developments.
Hamdi explains that the housing products offered by large developers—led by Talaat Moustafa—are designed for two segments only: A and AB. Together, these groups account for roughly 20% of total income in Egypt, yet represent no more than 7% of the population.
Meanwhile, the much larger B and C segments—representing 39% of the population—are effectively excluded from this market. They rely primarily on state-led initiatives such as social housing programs, which remain insufficient to meet their demand.
Data on vacant housing further exposes the scale of exclusion. According to Egypt’s Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, there were around 13 million vacant housing units in 2017—before the surge in supply driven by projects such as the New Administrative Capital.
This suggests that a significant portion of demand sustaining the market is not tied to population growth alone. It is also driven by hedging against inflation, the search for a store of value, inflows from Egyptians abroad and short-term speculation.
Reforming the market
Yahia Shawkat warns that the prevailing model does more than exclude broad segments of potential buyers—it entrenches the notion of housing as a speculative asset rather than a social good.
“This reflects a weak market structure,” he said. “Real estate is a non-productive asset. It does not generate income unless rented. Otherwise, it is simply an asset that may appreciate in value.”
Urban researcher Ahmed Zaazaa adds that the dominance of luxury real estate as a destination for household savings and diaspora capital diverts resources away from more productive sectors.
“Fields such as renewable energy, sustainable agriculture and responsible tourism could play this role,” he said. “They create new investment opportunities while delivering environmental benefits—reducing water and energy consumption and lowering carbon emissions.”
In light of these dynamics, the question of whether real estate prices in Egypt will fall is not merely a dispute over market trends. It is, more fundamentally, a debate about the very nature of the model itself.
A market described as resilient, leading and shock-absorbing is, at the same time, built on continuous inflows, future expectations and deferred pricing mechanisms—making it far more complex than a surface reading of price movements might suggest.