The Research Department at RAMCO sarl has been compiling data on the residential market in Beirut for several consecutive years: the number of residential projects being built, their total size (referred to as built-up area), their prices, their sales ratios, etc. The evolution of this data over the last three years (2012 to 2014) reveals a sluggish demand, a decrease in the average apartment size and an increase in the unit price of unsold apartments. The data collected is for residential buildings in Municipal Beirut completed at the end of each year between 2012 and 2014. Data was collected for projects that posted an asking price of around $3,000 per square meter (SQM) or above on the first floor, as projects within lower budgets tended to sell out off plan or relatively early in the construction process, and rarely offered reliable information on sales ratios. Shrinking apartment sizes The most striking
