Aleppo's City Council earlier this month issued Decree No. 55 for granting licences to restore damaged and endangered buildings, as well as the decree's executive instructions. It is assumed that residents of eastern Aleppo city, whose homes sustained large-scale destruction from heavy regime airstrikes throughout the war, will benefit from the decree.
Leasehold continues to be among the main sources of legal disputes in Syria, especially with properties leased to the public sector and political bodies.
The Syrian Salvation Government (SSG), which is affiliated with hardline Islamist group Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham, is reportedly trying to collect rent money from a displacement camp built on land that belongs to the Syrian state. It is unclear whether SSG intends to provide any services in exchange for the money.
Security patrols arrested dozens of young men in the town of Babila south of Damascus earlier this month under the pretext of searching for opposition sleeper cells and drug dealers, according to pro-opposition news site Sowt Al-Asimeh. Out of dozens of arrests, 12 targeted Palestinian men displaced from the neighbouring city of Al-Hajjar Al-Aswad. The 12 men were likely targeted for arrest deliberately, after they reportedly underwent security checks as part of their applications to return to their homes in Al-Hajjar Al-Aswad.
One year on from the dissolution of the General Union for Housing Cooperative, the Ministry of Public Works and Housing is continuing to dissolve more housing cooperatives. Members of dissolved cooperatives may be at risk of losing opportunities to obtain housing. It is not yet clear how much real estate the ministry has seized from the hands of the union and its branches in various governorates, as well as from local housing cooperatives.
Residents still living in the village of Borid in the rural southern part of the Suweida governorate were driven from their homes yet again last week, as they fled the latest clashes between armed groups from Daraa and Suweida.
Regime forces are demolishing and setting fire to properties owned by pro-opposition residents in rural Daraa, even though more than two years have passed since the reconciliation agreement that saw the area return to government control.
The pro-regime, Iran-backed Fatemeyoun Brigade, which includes Afghan fighters among its ranks, attacked the village of Al-Fasedeh in northeastern Hama governorate on September 29, despite the village being under regime control.
After a delay of more than eight years, it appears that the project to build alternative housing for former property owners at the Marota City and Basilia City areas in Damascus is gaining traction, with the past few days seeing numerous official statements about implementation.
The Parks Directorate at the Homs City Council announced last week that it had opened sections of land allocated to build the so-called "People's Park" for investment. The Directorate did not clarify what kinds of investment it was hoping to attract to the park project, which has been stalled since it was first announced in 1994.
Regime forces have seized a number of public and private properties in the city of Maaret Al-Numan in Idlib governorate, converting some into military bases and dashing displaced residents’ hopes of returning home in the near future.
It has been called "Syria's Solidere". What was once the informal Damascus neighbourhood of Basateen Al-Razi is today being ostensibly "reconstructed" as Marota City, a luxury real estate development financed by figures close to the government. The main company behind the project is Damascus Cham Holding, established in 2016 to finance Marota City.
Three years afterregime forces recaptured the formerly rebel-held town of Madaya in the western Damascus Countryside, the seizure of absentee properties continues. Those seizing these properties are mostly local townspeople affiliated with regime forces.
The Damascus Governorate has finally allowed some displaced people to return to the capital city’s southern Al-Tadhamon district, although the Governorate is still only permitting certain people who have obtained security clearance.
The Syrian Salvation Government (SSG), associated with the Islamist extremist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), is beginning to regularise the real estate sector in areas under its control in north-western Syria. The group is counting properties, organising construction, and banning slum housing. This new policy is also a potential source of revenue.
The past two weeks have seen fires devour large areas of forest and farmland in coastal Syria, forcing some residents to evacuate their homes and raising fears that influential figures may be considering seizing some of the affected land.
Tartous's Municipal Council announced in August that it was preparing to field investments in the area known as the "Tourism Area" just south of the coastal city, nearly five decades after the government expropriated the land.
Continued bombing and fighting in northeastern Syria between the majority Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) is preventing displaced residents from returning to their villages along the territorial dividing lines. Groups of SNA are also reportedly seizing some civilian homes on the front lines to fortify their positions.
Hardline Islamist group Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) has seized some Druze-owned properties in towns within the Jabal Al-Summaq, or Barisha, area in the northern part of the Idlib governorate.
Specialised crews are extracting and then selling iron rebar from demolished roofs in the city of Saraqib east of Idlib city, with protection from regime forces who took control of the area after virtually all residents fled earlier this year. The rebar extraction is rendering the targeted houses unsuitable for living, and vulnerable to collapse.