With rates up, who carries the property market’s 10-year payment plans?

The property market runs on credit that developers extend themselves, and that credit just got more expensive after the central bank raised rates for the first time since March 2024. Buyers typically put 5-10% down and pay the rest over eight to 12 years, according to a 3Q report (pdf) by Keller Williams Egypt and Gateway Financial Services. That model booked an estimated EGP 1.35 tn in contracted sales in the first nine months of 2026, most of it has yet to be collected. With the wait now more expensive, who can afford to keep carrying a decade of installments?

The Central Bank of Egypt’s (CBE) Monetary Policy Committee raised key rates by 100 bps on 29 October, taking the overnight deposit rate to 20.0% and the overnight lending rate to 21.0%, according to the CBE statement (pdf). For developers, the hike raises the cost of the wait: installments come in over years, while the debt funding construction now costs more. A week earlier, the EGP had crossed 55 to the USD for the first time.

Plans of 10 years or more account for 51% of listings in New Cairo, 64% in Mostakbal City, and 67% in the New Capital, according to the same report. Developers have long funded construction from those installments, a setup our coverage has called a zero-interest loan to developers.

The longer the plan, the longer the wait: Stretched plans turn record sales into receivables that take years to collect, as we reported in July. Talaat Moustafa Group (TMG) alone held EGP 180.4 bn in deferred checks for sold-but-undelivered units in 1Q 2026. Hany Genena, head of research at Al Ahly Pharos, told EnterpriseAM before the decision that higher rates would hit mid-size and small developers that rely on project finance, many of them already struggling to deliver units with slow sales and overstretched installment plans.

CI Capital has put a number on the hit to listed developers. Each 100-bp hike would cut target prices for four developers by 3.5-5.2%, since higher rates raise the returns investors demand and lower fair values, according to a research note we reviewed. TMG is the most exposed at 5.2% and Palm Hills Developments the least at 3.5%, with Madinet Masr and Orascom Development Egypt in between.

The weaker EGP cuts both ways: About 34% of TMG’s 2025 revenue and 23% of ODE’s come from hotels and USD-denominated sources, CI Capital says, so each additional 5% slide against the USD would lift their target prices by about 2%. Even with a further 5% slide on top of the hike, CI Capital expects target prices to fall 1.9-4.0%. The weaker EGP will also push up construction costs and force developers to pass them on to buyers, the note says.

Fewer units are moving, even as sales value rises. The Board Consulting, which ranks developers differently from Gateway, puts its top 10’s first-half 2026 sales at about 39k units, down 3% from a year earlier, while their sales value rose 2.9% to EGP 670 bn, according to the consultancy’s 1H 2026 newsletter (pdf). CI Capital’s forecast points the same way: it expects total unit sales in Egypt to fall at a 15% compound annual rate over 2025-2027 and says its valuations already reflect a sharp slowdown.

The construction bill stretches into 2030-2031: that’s when about 42% of North Coast listings, 48% in Mostakbal City, and 44% in the New Capital are due for handover. The Keller Williams-Gateway Financial report notes that these dates don’t measure delivery track records.

The state has floated a way out: As President Abdel Fattah El Sisi ordered a nationwide audit of delayed real estate projects in August, the New Urban Communities Authority (NUCA) was looking at securitizing developers’ installment receivables through banks and financing institutions. Securitization would give developers a more flexible funding source, especially smaller ones, Waleed Abbas, deputy housing minister for NUCA affairs, told EnterpriseAM at the time. However, in July of this year, the CBE tightened controls on banks’ investment in corporate bonds and securitization, against the backdrop of the recent increase in the size of lenders’ exposure to these instruments.

Regulators have been circling pre-sales. In February, we reported on a draft developers law that would bar developers from marketing, selling, or collecting a single payment until they complete 30% of construction. On a project that costs EGP 1 bn to build, that’s EGP 300 mn upfront before the first sale. That could squeeze out smaller players without the balance sheets to build first, we flagged at the time. The latest draft centers on escrow instead: every project sold off-plan needs its own account, and payment schedules are tied to completion rates. It has yet to reach the Cabinet, we reported in September.

One developer says the screening has already started: Developers now need 70% of first-phase concrete work finished before they can license a second phase, Karim Malash, chairman and CEO of M Squared, told us in September. New committees check plot status, solvency, and actual completion rates, he said, and for developers that are genuinely stuck, he sees consolidation as the fix.