There are 300,000 buildings in Egypt prone to collapse, Dr Hussein Gom’aa, head of the Egyptian Association for the Real Estate Heritage, told Invest-Gate. “This number might look small, but the real problem is in the five to six million people living in these buildings. If – God forbid – an earthquake as strong as 3 Richter hits the country, these buildings will collapse,” he said.

“The real problem is that there are 150 laws and regulations for construction, where there should only be five to avoid any manipulation. These 150 laws pave the way for a lot of manipulations, leading us to this point we’re at,” Gom’aa further explained.

“There’s no doubt that the real estate situation in Egypt is not in a good condition due to the decline in maintenance, using inefficient building material, faults in construction and execution,” Dr Magdy Qorqor, professor in the Faculty of Urban Planning at Cairo University, told Invest-Gate.

Qorqor finds Gom’aa’s calculations reasonable, explaining that there are 10 to 12 mn buildings in the country. “Adding 10 or more floors on top of the number of floors permitted by the Ministry of Housing’s guidelines also holds a great impact on the possibility of collapse,” he added.

The professor also said that overcoming this problem cannot be done at once; “The government has to gradually work on each of the aforementioned faults,” he recommended.