Iraqi children play near their former school, amid rubble that was once their homes, in the Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib.

By Subhy Haddad, IOL correspondent

BAGHDAD, AUGUST 16 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Prices of land and real estate have jacked up in Iraq after the end of the war launched by the United States and Britain, according to a report released by the Baghdad Lord Mayor’s Office on Saturday, August 16.

It said that a square meter of land at Baghdad’s Al-Mansour district, for example, has risen from 250 to 1,000 U.S. dollars over the past three months.

According to the report, the average price of a 600-square meter house in the district has rocketed to 1.5 million dollars!

The Baghdad Lord Mayor’s Office admitted that over 840,000 families in the capital alone do not possess their own houses and most of them live in tents, mud huts or in the open air.

In the wake of the capital downfall on April 9, homeless Iraqi families annexed government buildings, including prisons and military camps, and reshaped them into residential areas after the U.S.-led air strikes had razed their houses to the ground.

Al-Rasheed military camp is now rife with signs reading: “family apartment” and “please, do not disturb.”

Baghdad Mayorship is planning to build housing complexes in Baghdad’s Al-Rasheed camp, Al-Muthanna airport, the headquarters of the former Republican and Special Guards and some of the large offices of the former regime.

The elite Republican Guards were occupying hundreds of thousands of square meters of lands in some of Baghdad’s best districts and change them into headquarters.

Looters

A number of real state dealers charged that “certain elements, who plundered huge amounts of money from government offices, banks and houses of leading former officials, are being behind the high rise in real estate, land and houses.”

One dealer recalled that a “man in an Iraqi dishdasha robe came driving a pick-up to my real estate shop and bought a furnished house for half million dollars in cash!”

Other dealers said that some of the well-off Iraqis who have been living abroad and were planning to return home “are now buying houses for ferocious prices.”

Real Estate Dealer, Rida Al-Yasiri suggested a 3 to 1 per cent reduction of the real estate tax to help people with low incomes to buy houses.

Other dealers estimated average prices for houses not more than 150 square meter area at Baghdad’s relatively middle class or poor areas, such as Saydia district to range between 50-80 million Iraqi dinars.  A U.S. dollar at the present rate equals about 1,500 Iraqi dinars.