Resource information
The object of the study reflected in the paper is the market sector of agricultural lands in Latvia. The goal set out in this scientific paper is to explore the development trends current in the target sector of the market and identify problems and barriers to successful progress common to the entire real estate market in this country. The development of the market sector for agricultural lands is defined both by internal factors, such as, state policy and economic stability, refinancing and loan rates, friendly business and investment environment, development cycles of national economy, and also by such external factors as credit policy of other countries, stagnation and revival periods in neighbouring countries' economy, etc. Considering the limited volume of this reference paper, it is not possible to provide deeper insight of factors related to the development of the market sector for agricultural lands. The paper, thus, analyses mainly those issues that have contributed to the development of the target market sector during the previous year. These are - the development of the building and construction industry, real estate price speculations and transformation rules that allow the transformation of agricultural lands into non-agricultural plots. On having assessed the building and construction industry, it has become clear that the main drive of its development is the boom in the real estate market, which causes a chain reaction, where an impulse produced by the demand in the real estate market reaches the market for building and construction and further on the reaction is beamed forward onto the land market. The development is a logical and desirable process in any branch of economy, but if the progress becomes a rush, the relevant market sector fails to adjust itself to those rapid changes. The paper refers to and evaluates only a few of the existing problems, as well as provides possible solution to them.
