Habibollah Taherkhani, Deputy Minister of Roads and Urban Development, said: "At the macro level, we are not necessarily faced with an absolute shortage of housing units; there are about 32.5 million housing units in the country, and after subtracting approximately 2.5 million vacant units, nearly 30 million units are available to households, while the number of households is about 27.1 million households."

He added: "The experience of the past two decades has shown that part of the housing supply has gone beyond the economic capacity of households. In some periods as well, the country’s resources and capacities were used to build luxury units; units that a significant portion of society could not access and sometimes remained vacant for years."