Morocco property prices 2026: are they really falling?

Are property prices falling in Morocco? Not according to the official index: in the second quarter of 2026, prices were up 0.7% year on year and the number of sales up 6.3%.

“Property prices are collapsing in Morocco.” The headline went round everywhere in the spring, after Bank Al-Maghrib (Morocco’s central bank) and the ANCFCC (the national land registry agency) published their note on the first quarter of 2026, and it is still circulating. As is often the case, the figure behind it (-40%) is not the one to look at. The market did slow down in the first quarter, that is real, but talk of a property crisis is greatly overstated: the market is not collapsing, and the second-quarter note points the same way. This article sorts it out: what the official 2026 data actually say, why the “-40%” misleads, and above all what it changes in practice when you are buying in Morocco from abroad.

In short

• In the second quarter of 2026, prices rose 0.7% year on year and sales 6.3%. The crash announced in the spring did not happen.
• The “-40%” in the headlines was a quarter-on-quarter change in Q1, amplified, in my view, by seasonality and by a very high Q4 2025: year on year, sales fell only 9.3%.
• Even the slight fall in Q1 prices (-0.4% year on year) has been revised: in the series published with the Q2 note, the Q1 index is almost flat year on year.
• Up to Q2 2026, the movement is about volumes more than prices.
• The additional 2% registration duty (price paid in cash, or payment method not stated) applies to deeds drawn up since 1 July; the third-quarter note will cover the first registrations under the new rule, without isolating its effect.
• The tax administration’s official price reference, used to correct a declared price that is too low, can no longer be consulted online: the editions in circulation include the Casablanca edition of January 2015 and the Rabat, Mohammedia and Témara editions of 29 December 2017.
• For a buyer abroad, the method does not change: negotiate on data and stay selective, whatever the headline of the moment.

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What the official figures say

In the second quarter of 2026, according to Bank Al-Maghrib and the ANCFCC, the real estate asset price index (IPAI, indice des prix des actifs immobiliers) rose 0.7% year on year, and by the same amount on the quarter. For residential property, it is +1% year on year. Sales picked up: the number of transactions rose 6.3% year on year and 11% on the quarter. For homes alone, sales rose 3.9% year on year. By city, on the quarter, prices rose in Tangier (+2.3%), Rabat (+1.9%), Casablanca (+0.5%) and Marrakech (+0.5%). So did sales, from +4.4% in Casablanca to +61.2% in Rabat. In Casablanca, though, it is land and commercial property that drive the figure: sales of homes there fell 2.2%.

The previous quarter told a different story. In the first quarter of 2026, the IPAI fell 0.4% year on year (and 2.4% on the quarter). For residential property, it was -0.6% year on year. The signal was in sales: the number of transactions fell 9.3% year on year (and 40.2% on the quarter). The Q1 price index has since been revised (see the box further down): in the series published with the Q2 note, it is now almost flat year on year (+0.1% overall, -0.1% residential).

In Q1, by city and on the quarter, prices had fallen in Rabat (-4.7%), Casablanca (-2.7%), Marrakech (-1.5%) and Tangier (-3.9%). Everywhere, the same pattern: prices easing moderately and volumes falling sharply.

Q1: figures as published in the Q1 note.

A city average is only a starting point: for Casablanca, I compare neighbourhoods on yield, not just price, in the best areas to buy property in Casablanca. Another official benchmark, meanwhile, has stopped being accessible: the tax administration’s property price reference, which I cover further down.

Prices are not transactions: why the “-40%” misleads

The first reading error is to confuse prices with the number of sales. In Q1, prices barely moved (-0.4% year on year, since revised to +0.1%). What fell was volumes. The second error is to take a quarterly figure for the trend.

The “-40%” is a change from one quarter to the next (Q1 2026 compared with Q4 2025). And that comparison repeats itself: already in Q1 2025, the number of transactions had fallen by about 30% on the quarter, while prices stayed almost flat. The first quarter is regularly weak in registrations, and comparing it with the quarter before magnifies the fall. The note does not say why. Here is my reading, which remains an interpretation.

The index measures registered sales, and between the signing of a preliminary sale agreement and the final registration, several weeks often pass, sometimes several months. Part of the sales registered in Q1 may therefore have been agreed at the end of the year, and part of those in Q4 during the summer, when people have more time to search and close a deal. The return after the summer, by contrast, is slower (back to work and school, and the spending that comes with it). If this lag works as I think it does, the first-quarter dip is first about volumes, not prices.

On top of that comes a base effect: according to the chart in the Q1 note, Q4 2025 was a very high quarter, above every quarter since 2020 except the post-Covid rebound of 2021. Comparing a first quarter with that peak mechanically widens the gap. In plain terms: Q1 2026 is not a collapse, it is a fall from a very high quarter.

The second quarter points the same way. The right comparison is still the previous year: year on year, sales went from -9.3% in Q1 to +6.3% in Q2, and prices from +0.1% (revised Q1) to +0.7%. The +11% on the quarter is partly the rebound from a weak Q1. One quarter does not make a trend, but nothing in Q2 looks like a crash.

How to read the IPAI. The index is calculated using the repeat-sales method (base 100 in 2006), on transactions registered with the land registry (conservation foncière) only. Because registration happens several weeks to several months after the actual sale, a quarter can partly reflect transactions agreed the quarter before. And the very latest quarter, still incomplete at the cut-off date (35 days after it ends), is revised afterwards.

Why this slowdown?

To be straightforward: Bank Al-Maghrib’s note gives no cause, it measures. Any “why” is therefore an interpretation, to be handled with care. The first lead, seasonality, we have just seen: in my view, it is what weighs most in the size of the quarterly figure. Alongside it, one other factor, and one misconception to set aside.

A possible factor: the 2026 tax transition. The Finance Act 2026 (Loi de Finances 2026) introduces an additional 2% registration duty on property transfers above 300,000 MAD, due if the deed does not state how the price is paid or if the price is not paid by traceable means. When part of the price is paid in cash, the 2% applies only to that part. It applies to deeds drawn up since 1 July 2026. The stated aim: to trace transactions and reduce the informal economy. Before it came into force, the measure may have frozen some cash-funded deals, or on the contrary sped others up to sign in time: the note says nothing about this, and Q2 does not settle the question. The third-quarter note will cover the first registrations under the new rule, but it will mix sales signed before and after 1 July, and will not on its own show what is down to the tax. The taxes you pay as an owner are covered in property taxes in Morocco for non-residents.

A price correction? The figures mostly show a long stagnation. The idea of a correction after years of rising prices is going round, but the official index has seen no recent rise: its high point dates from the end of 2020, it is 4.2% below its Q2 2019 level and roughly where it was ten years ago (-0.6% between Q2 2016 and Q2 2026). And it rose again in Q2.

Plausible interpretations, to be taken as such: developers holding back (closing their year-end accounts, waiting for clarity on tax) and more cautious lending conditions. These are common-sense hypotheses, not facts established by the note.

What this changes for a buyer abroad

A weak quarter is not bad news when you are on the buyer’s side. Alarmist headlines, worried sellers, less competition: this is where room for negotiation exists. Nothing guarantees it will last: in Q2, sales picked up again. The advantage goes to whoever reads the figures before the others, not to whoever waits for the next headline. But watch out for the opposite trap: a property that is not selling is not necessarily a good deal. In a selective market, the quality of the property and the accuracy of the price matter more than ever. To measure what a discount really changes, test the negotiated price in the rental yield calculator: total acquisition cost, monthly repayment and gross yield are recalculated instantly.

The official price reference you can no longer check

Besides the index, Morocco has a second official price benchmark, and this one has stopped being accessible: the property price reference (référentiel des prix immobiliers) of the DGI (Direction générale des impôts, the tax administration). It is a grid of average prices by area, which the tax administration sets against a declared sale price that is too low, and on the basis of which it then corrects that price. It binds you even if you never open it.

A floor, not a valuation. The official notice for the DGI’s app says it plainly (the documents are in French; translations are mine). Declarations with a price below the reference “will be corrected by the DGI, on the basis of the app’s prices”. For declarations with a higher price, tax “will be calculated on the basis of the declared prices or estimated values”. The mechanism is asymmetric by design: the reference caps nothing on the way up, it holds a threshold on the way down. It is a control tool, not a valuation of your flat, and the document is careful to say so: these are “average prices used to calculate duties and taxes” which “in no case constitute a direct valuation of a given property”. Property listing platforms also publish price references, but these are estimates built on listings, not administrative scales, and they do not agree with each other.

A tool created to give you the same information as the tax office. The official 2015 manual says the reference “allows citizens, in a spirit of improving trust, to have the same level of information as the Administration”. The app’s notice, two years later, repeats the same wording. The data are presented as the joint work of the DGI, the land registry, the national federation of property developers, Bank Al-Maghrib, the urban planning agencies, the ministry of urban planning and the notaries’ professional body. The same manual makes an explicit commitment: “The data in this reference will be updated periodically in line with changes in the property market.”

What happens when you try to consult it. Three routes have been announced over the years. Here is their status, checked on 1 September 2026.

Two further reservations apply to these PDFs, on top of their age:

• they circulate through third-party sites, firms and private publishers, not through the DGI;
• you can find seven cities, while the portal announced seventeen at its launch.

The 2015 manual also mentions another route, the only one with no reason to be broken: the DGI reception offices in Casablanca and/or its telephone information centre on +212 5 37 27 37 27. The office is out of reach when you live abroad. The phone line, however, can still be reached, and it is today the most reliable official route.

Why this matters when you buy from abroad. The rule keeps producing its effects, whether or not you can check it. The imbalance the tool was meant to correct is intact. The tax administration has its grid. The local seller often knows the practices of their neighbourhood. You, from Brussels or Dubai, decide without either.

Above all, there is one consequence almost no buyer anticipates. The price written in the deed, whatever it is, becomes your acquisition price. The day you sell, your taxable profit will be calculated, roughly speaking, on the difference between the sale price and that acquisition price, the latter being determined under the specific rules of Morocco’s General Tax Code (Code général des impôts), which notably allow certain costs and expenses. In principle, the lower the acquisition price used, the higher the taxable profit. You do not feel this effect as a buyer: you feel it as a future seller, years later, when it is too late to go back on it. It is a point to review with a professional before you sign.

What to do instead

Since the official benchmark is out of service, you have to rebuild one. Three steps, in this order.

First, call. The DGI’s information centre is the only official channel still reachable from abroad, and the service itself is free.

Next, compare for real. Note the prices per m² actually being asked in the same neighbourhood, for the same type of property, at a similar size. To get a first idea before that survey, darindex aggregates asking prices for sale and for rent in the main cities and gives an immediate order of magnitude, to be confirmed afterwards on real listings of comparable size. This gives you a more useful range than an outdated administrative average.

Finally, check that the price stands up. The rental yield calculator gives the property’s total acquisition cost and gross yield, purchase costs included: it is the first filter. A property can be in line with neighbourhood prices and still be a bad buy if the net yield, once running costs are deducted, does not follow. And if a price is surprisingly low, run the usual checks before you celebrate.

How to act without getting it wrong

Three habits. First, reason on the real net yield of a property, not on the asking price or on a flattering gross yield. Next, negotiate on data: real transaction prices of comparable properties, not asking prices. Finally, stay selective, and do not give in to reverse FOMO, the “prices are falling, I’ll buy anything” reflex. A calmer market rewards patience and method.

Getting support when the market turns

It is exactly in this kind of market that support aligned with the buyer becomes valuable. Reading the data coolly, telling a real entry point apart from a property that is stagnating for the wrong reasons, negotiating on concrete facts: that is the work I do for people buying from abroad, foreign nationals and MRE (Marocains résidant à l’étranger, Moroccans living abroad) alike, on the buyer’s side, with no property to sell. How I work explains the rest.

Want a price checked on a specific property before you commit? Book a free 20-minute call on Calendly, or message me directly on WhatsApp.

Sources: Bank Al-Maghrib / ANCFCC (official IPAI notes for Q1 and Q2 2026; IPAI series, “Séries IPAI” file on bkam.ma, “Global” tab); le360, LesEco, Deloitte, SNRT (Finance Act 2026 measures on cash payments); Direction générale des impôts, “Référentiel des prix de l’immobilier”, Casablanca manual, January 2015 edition; Direction générale des impôts, official notice for the “Référentiel des Prix de l’Immobilier” mobile app, consulted on 1 September 2026; Ministry of Economy and Finance, launch announcement of the mobile app and presentation of the DGI portal. Access status checked on 1 September 2026. This article is for information only and does not constitute legal, tax or financial advice; any decision should be confirmed with a qualified professional.