Some Estonian construction sites have been abandoned as funding dried up after the crisis hit. Construction activity is down 29% year-on-year.

TALLINN — While the latest gross domestic product figures indicate that the economic crisis has bottomed out in Estonia, the construction industry is still in freefall.

While the GDP’s fall slackened, according to the Estonian Department of Statistics, in the third quarter construction of 2009 construction activity decreased 29 percent year-on-year and 1 percent from the second quarter.

The construction industry’s misfortunes ride the coattails of the real estate market in general. Both commercial and residential real estate prices in Estonia, as in the other two Baltic states, are continuing their enormous decline in value.

Given a glut of commercial real estate built during the “Baltic Tiger” boom and the job cuts and business closures the crisis has brought, 20 percent of office space in Tallinn is now vacant.

According to the Ober Haus real estate company, from the spring 2007 to this fall, residential real estate prices in Tallinn have fallen 50 percent. Likewise the number of transactions fell 55 percent and the total volumes 75 percent.