Mark Wallington's Blog: All Categories

When the Palm Jumeirah was originally launched it captured press headlines all around the globe and caused an international media storm with its daring new land reclamation infrastructure not seen before in Dubai real estate. No land reclamation project on such a scale had ever been attempted, and with its eye catching palm tree shaped design, buyers from numerous countries wanted to own part of such a groundbreaking and luxury project. With such international acclaim and strong buyer interest, prices at the development shot up in record time, with property at the development changing hands numerous times in rapid succession as investors tried to cash in on the large demand for freehold property at the Palm. Offering apartments, villas and townhouses, the…

With rental prices for Dubai residential real estate reaching record levels in 2008 and generally being a source of dissatisfaction for everyone bar landlords, the Dubai Real Estate Regulatory Agency’s (RERA) property rental index has been much anticipated amongst Dubai residents. The commercial Index was released last week, and this week has seen the revealing of the residential Index, but it was certainly not what everyone was hoping for! With the Dubai economy not far away from being certified as a crisis state, property prices falling at an alarming rate and redundancies being seen from some of Dubai’s largest companies, it is probably fair to say that everyone was expecting the rental price index to suggest a sizable reduction in rental prices. Not…

Freehold property prices are dropping, homes are not selling, developers are canceling projects all over the place and credit is near impossible to come by. It is probably fair to say that the recent property price slump has not exactly brought too much joy to those involved in Dubai real estate, but the Dubai Property Society has recently come out to state that it believes that the current situation can actually be viewed as a positive thing for freehold property here. How you might be thinking? Well for a start many experts believe that the property slump will lead to a change in people’s views and opinions in regards to how the market functions and should set the foundations and heralded a move towards more sustainable market policies and dealings. A…

There are rightly a lot of negatives being pointed out at the moment with regards to the Dubai freehold crash, but it doesn’t all have to be negative! A lot of things depend on your perspective, and that can certainly be applied here. The Dubai real estate market has up until very recently seen nothing but success, made a lot of people very rich and attracted a huge amount of attention and interest to Dubai. Yet the bottom line of all this was that property prices soared, and for a lot of developments, property was no longer very affordable, something that had been a huge selling point for Dubai in the start. So despite the freehold real estate market being so prosperous, for a lot of people, the last year or two at least, all it did was leave a very small…

After so many years of rapid growth and development, it looks like things have finally caught up with the Dubai property market. For a long time it looked like things here would never stop, with new developments being announced on an almost daily basis, Dubai was expanding at a breath taking rate and property prices were shooting up. But as we now know, this couldn’t go on forever. There had already been a lot of talk with regards to an impending property downturn but the world financial crisis certainly gave the Dubai real estate market the push it required to start the fall. Since then liquidity both for buyers and developers has dried up, the results of which are being very much felt today. This has led the likes of Citigroup and Aseambankers to issue…

It looks like the Dubai government may well be ready to move and readjust its policy towards issuing freehold property visas. Since 2002 Developers in Dubai have been giving those foreign nationals, who purchased Dubai real estate residency visas, but recently the rules were changed and some developers were unable or unwilling to issue the residency visas anymore. By giving residency visas for a freehold property purchase, the Dubai government was able to attract a huge amount of foreign investment to Dubai. After witnessing the success of such a policy a number of developers in Ajman and Ras Al Khaimah decided to also employ this policy to foreign real estate investors. Since the visa policy was stopped there have been strong calls to reintroduce it. Now…

Tenants in Dubai could soon receive some long overdue good news with regards to renting Dubai real estate. For a good while now rental prices in Dubai have been continuously increasing, in some cases to levels so high that many have had to consider the feasibility of staying in Dubai. With many tenants having to spend upwards of 50% of their salaries just on rent, renting here in Dubai was become a large burden. Even now the situation for tenants in not clear and highly confusing. The Government is yet to release the rental cap for New Year whilst the long awaited rental index is also yet to materialize. Add in there are conflicting reports of price increases and decreases and you do have to wonder what is going on! But the luck for tenants might just be…

It is now pretty well established that for the past few months the Dubai real estate market has been undergoing a sharp price correction, some might go so far to say a property crash with the recent news that prices in some up market luxury villa developments have fallen up to 50% in the last quarter of 2008. Things certainly are gloomy, with investor confidence at an all time low and no one really sure how long it will be before prices reach their bottom and things can start to improve. There is still some confusion to how bad the situation really is at the moment with conflicting reports from the media not helping clarify the situation. However there is mounting evidence that things in the Dubai property market are certainly not what they were a year or…