Cairo’s rental market running double-digit increase

Cairo’s rental market is running double-digit increase while sales stall — and developers haven't repriced yet. Asking rents in Sixth of October and New Cairo rose 11.2% and 10.0% y-o-y in 1Q 2026 as inflation-squeezed buyers moved from purchase to lease, according to JLL’s quarterly report (pdf).

Sale prices grew at less than half that pace, 5.4% in Sixth of October and 3.1% in New Cairo in the secondary market. Major developers stretched payment plans and offered upfront-buyer discounts to keep volume moving; smaller ones, starved of liquidity, sat out new launches.

The supply numbers tell the same story. Only 8k units came onto a 333.5k-unit stock during the quarter — a quiet read for a market that until recently was running hard on new launches.

The bigger question is the office and commercial market, where the post-March EGP depreciation hasn’t yet shown up in prices. Prime and Grade-A asking rents rose just 1.8% and 2.3% y-o-y — well below the currency move — and landlords are “reassessing pricing strategies, particularly for local currency contracts,” according to JLL.

Savills Egypt’s Catesby Langer-Paget tells clients in a note (pdf) that developers are absorbing cost pressure rather than repricing, helped by buffers built in during the 2024 volatility.

Our take: The cost stack — EGP movement, energy costs, supply chain disruptions — is still moving, and the question isn’t whether the office market reprices, but when, and which landlords blink first.