Morocco's property market: households borrow more, developers no longer

Financing

Financing: two curves that have parted ways

Why banks still lend to the household that buys, and barely to the developer that builds.

Bank Al-Maghrib's monthly series make it possible to follow separately what banks lend to households to house themselves, and what they lend to developers to produce. Over eleven and a half years, the two paths no longer have anything in common. Mortgage credit gains 51.6 % and reaches 258.6 billion dirhams in June 2026. Credit to developers loses 2.0 % and falls back to 63.7 billion, below its January 2015 level. A third figure explains the second: the banking system's non-performing loans have more than doubled over the period, from 52.1 to 104.8 billion dirhams, up 100.9 %. They now weigh 8.0 % of total outstanding credit. A bank whose arrears double does not tighten at random: it tightens where the risk is concentrated, which is the financing of production. One last, wider marker: property's share of all Moroccan bank credit fell from 31.6 % to 25.3 %. The sector is not shrinking in absolute terms, it is slipping down lenders' priorities.

🔍 Focus: why a ratio says more than an amount

The 104.8 billion dirhams of non-performing loans look impressive, but taken alone they prove nothing. A banking system whose balance sheet grows mechanically sees its arrears grow too. The only sound reading is the ratio: those loans today represent 8.0 % of total outstanding credit. That figure, not the gross amount, measures fragility and drives lender behaviour. The same reflex applies to mortgage credit. Its 258.6 billion make it the leading item of household credit, yet measured against all bank credit, property falls from 31.6 % to 25.3 % in eleven years. In other words, households borrow more than before to house themselves, and the rest of the economy still borrows faster than they do. A rising amount and a falling share do not contradict each other: they answer two different questions. Anyone reading a market on a single gross number is nearly always reading the wrong one.

🧭 Key takeaways

Mortgage credit gains 51.6 % between January 2015 and June 2026, from 170.6 to 258.6 billion dirhams. Solvent demand is financed.
Credit to developers falls 2.0 % over the same period, to 63.7 billion. Supply, and supply alone, has lost its financing.
The signal to watch: the non-performing loan ratio, at 8.0 % of outstanding credit. As long as it does not recede, banks have no reason to reopen the tap on the production side.

⚠️ These series are outstanding amounts, not flows: they say what banks carry on their balance sheet, not what they granted during the month. A flat outstanding amount can hide high repayments offset by new loans. And credit to developers does not measure the whole financing of supply: equity, buyer instalments and non-bank funding do not appear in it.

→ Eleven years of credit series, and what they imply for output, in the study The residential property market in Morocco

Inventory

Inventory: close to five years of output tied up

What the balance sheets of the three listed developers say, and what the income statement hides.

The three developers listed on the Casablanca Stock Exchange file an annual financial report with the AMMC, Morocco's markets authority. It carries the revenue line, which the press turns into headlines, and the inventory line, which it almost never mentions. Yet it is the second that tells the story of this market. Together, Addoha, Alliances and Résidences Dar Saada carry 27.4 billion dirhams of inventory and work in progress for 5.6 billion of revenue in 2025, that is 4.9 years of output tied up. The detail is very uneven: 6.3 years for Addoha, 2.1 for Alliances, and 10.7 years for Dar Saada, the only one of the three to lose money over the year. This inventory is not a cyclical accident, it is capital that has stopped turning. And it directly lights up the banking retreat described above: no one lends readily to a sector whose main collateral is an asset that takes close to five years to sell.

🔍 Focus: the trap of the multi-year comparison

There is a precise reason why press analyses contradict each other from one year to the next on these three companies. All three have changed their revenue recognition rule. Alliances writes it plainly in its report: under the previous rules, its 2025 revenue would have reached 2.7 billion dirhams instead of the 2.4 published. Dar Saada states that its own figures are restated for the same reason. Comparing 2025 revenue with an earlier year without saying so means measuring a change of accounting method and calling it a market move. That is exactly where commentary goes wrong. The remedy is simple: state the basis of the comparison, or compare only what has stayed on the same basis. Inventory, being a balance-sheet stock rather than a flow recognised over time, is far less exposed to that revision. One more reason to look at it first.

🧭 Key takeaways

27.4 billion dirhams of inventory for 5.6 billion of revenue across the three listed developers, that is 4.9 years of output tied up.
The spread between them is wide: 2.1 years for Alliances, 6.3 for Addoha, 10.7 for Dar Saada. A sector average means nothing here.
The signal to watch: the pace at which inventory clears, more telling than published revenue, which depends on recognition rules the three companies have revised.

⚠️ These three companies are not the Moroccan market: they are its listed part, hence the largest and the most visible. The rest of output, carried by unlisted players, publishes no balance sheet and escapes this reading. The 4.9-year ratio holds for that perimeter, and for that perimeter only.

→ The inventory of the three developers, company by company and line by line, in the study The residential property market in Morocco

Prices

Price per square metre: what the law requires and nobody publishes

Why no official transaction price exists in Morocco, although every off-plan contract carries one.

Here is the most disconcerting point of the whole file. No Moroccan institution publishes a transaction price per square metre. The property asset price index, produced jointly by Bank Al-Maghrib and the ANCFCC, nonetheless rests on land registry deeds, hence on the full record of registered transfers. It publishes indices and changes, never a level in dirhams. In the first quarter of 2026 it shows prices almost flat year on year, at -0.4 %, for transactions down 9.3 %. The amounts circulating in the press and on listing portals come from agencies, with no published methodology: these are asking prices, not recorded prices, and the two can drift apart for a long time. The paradox is complete once you open the text governing off-plan sales: the law requires the preliminary contract to state the final sale price per square metre. The figure therefore exists in every off-plan deed signed in the country, checked by the professional who draws it up. It is aggregated nowhere. The opacity of this market does not come from a lack of information, it comes from a lack of publication.

🔍 Focus: what bounds the market when no price is published

With no observed price, what remains are enforceable prices, written into the general tax code. The social housing regime sets a ceiling of 250,000 dirhams excluding VAT for a floor area of 50 to 80 square metres, which amounts to a de facto band of 3,125 to 5,000 dirhams per square metre. That is the lower bound of the market, and it is administered, not negotiated. At the other end of the chain the exit cost is written down too: land profits are taxed at 20 %, with a minimum contribution of 3 % of the sale price due even where there is no profit. You therefore pay tax while selling at a loss. Between those two bounds, the price forms with no public reference point. For anyone who has to decide, the consequence is direct: in Morocco the most solid reading grid is not statistical, it is fiscal and legal.

🧭 Key takeaways

The official index gives no price level: in the first quarter of 2026 it shows -0.4 % on prices and -9.3 % on transactions, without ever saying what a square metre costs.
The law nonetheless requires a price per square metre in every off-plan preliminary contract. The data exists deed by deed, and is consolidated nowhere.
The signal to watch: the social housing tax ceilings, between 3,125 and 5,000 dirhams per square metre, the only published and enforceable price reference.

⚠️ Be wary of the price per square metre quoted in the press or on Moroccan listing portals: those are prices asked by sellers, not prices recorded in deeds. They follow no published methodology and cannot serve as a reference in a decision. With no official series, the only rigorous way to read a price movement is through the index, on a constant perimeter.

→ The rents of 75 urban areas and the full legal and tax framework, in the study The residential property market in Morocco

Morocco's property market: households borrow more, developers no longer borrow at all

This month's intuition

Financing: two curves that have parted ways

🔍 Focus: why a ratio says more than an amount

Inventory: close to five years of output tied up

🔍 Focus: the trap of the multi-year comparison

Price per square metre: what the law requires and nobody publishes

🔍 Focus: what bounds the market when no price is published

The common thread: a market that is not short of buyers

Moroccan property signals in summer 2026

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Sources & methodology