Dubai property boom halts: The News

Sunday, November 16, 2008

DUBAI: Dubai property shares plunged and its biggest private developer slashed jobs this week as the global financial crisis tightened its grip on the tiny emirate, until now synonymous with the Gulf Arab real estate boom.

Dubai’s glittering skyline and luxury tourism sector have lured investors in droves over the past five years. But property prices have begun to fall, according to brokers and banks, in one of the clearest signs to date that the bubble has burst.

A real estate crash in Dubai would call into question the futures of millions of immigrant workers, many from India and Pakistan, and whether energy exporter Abu Dhabi would run to the rescue of its high-flying but poorer neighbour.”Villas that were very hot before the crisis have fallen. The buyers were chasing the sellers but now it’s the other way round,” said Quaid Abbas, property consultant at Engel & Volkers.

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Real estate boom: The News

People liquidating bank savings to invest in property; FPCCI body on housing and construction SVP Munir Sultan says rates to remain stable and hike after March; realtors say investors fearing financial meltdown in UAE coming back home

Sunday, November 16, 2008

By Faryal Najeeb

KARACHI: Local builders in Pakistan are having a field day as the newly introduced projects all over Pakistan have received tremendous positive response marking the first signs of real estate sector revival in the country.

Real estate agents and builders said that though prices continue to remain low owing to recession - the demand for properties is increasing as investors are coming back home after trying their luck in UAE.Senior Vice President of FPCCI Sub committee on Housing and Construction, Munir Sultan predicted that the prices of properties would remain stable for the time being and would only hike after March. Estate agents and experts informed that the buyers of these properties are investors having money stashed in local and foreign banks and following the global credit crunch feared for their savings.

Sultan explained: “These are ordinary well to-do people of our society who liquidated their bank savings and opted for safe heaven investment in real estate. Properties are sound investments as no one can steal them from you and more importantly because regardless of the political or economical conditions, land assets do eventually gain value with time.”

He further said that Pakistan urgently needs to work on its investors’ confidence and the government should take steps to clear the country of its black economy that is working parallel to the legal system.

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Emaar Ceo Changed: Dawn

By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, Nov 6: Emaar Pakistan, a subsidiary of Dubai-based Emaar Properties, has appointed Dr Dia Malaeb as new chief executive officer.

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How Wall Street's Bust Threatens Dubai's Boom: Time

By Scott MacLeod / Cairo Sunday, Oct. 19, 2008

Emirati investors follow the movement of stock prices at the Dubai Financial Market on Oct. 12

MARWAN NAAMANI/ AFP/ Getty

Saif Ahmed began living the Dubai dream five years ago. The University of Toronto business school grad moved to the Gulf city-state and quickly co-founded property developer Universal Canlink Inc. By 2006, the firm was turning over $15 million a year as its brochures lured foreign investors with tales of "meteoric" growth in the Dubai real estate market. Now, as the global credit crisis spirals from Wall Street to the Middle East, Ahmed is coming back down to earth. There's still interest, he explains, but the buying frenzy in Dubai is gone. "Before, people were buying blindly without asking much about the details," says Ahmed, a Canadian. "Now such risk takers have disappeared from the market."

Among the harbingers of the changing mood: Nakheel, the developer of Dubai's proposed kilometer-high skyscraper near Jebel Ali airport, recently announced that it is reassessing its overall staffing needs in line with "predictions of a downturn in the global economy." Boardrooms and coffee shops alike are buzzing with talk about the coming fall. The Cairo-based investment bank EFG-Hermes recently predicted that Dubai property values could tumble as much as 20% in the next three years. Share prices of Emaar, a public Dubai company that has become one of the biggest real estate developers in the world, have fallen by two-thirds since January.

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Clouds could gather even above Dubai: Napi Online

Plankó Gergely 2008. 10. 27. 23:00:00

If there is a place in the world that would be able to emerge relatively unscathed from the global financial crisis, it is Dubai and countries like it - most of us would have thought.

But according to a recent study published by Morgan Stanley, property prices could fall by 10 percent in Dubai by 2010. What could have happened in this country, which has shifted its focus away from oil revenues, and more toward property developments and tourism? (See NAPI Real Estate, issue 3)

Speculators burned

The simplest explanation is probably that the room for rising demand is not infinite even in the Emirates - which can shock companies used to easy profits. Meanwhile, simultaneously to the publication of the report, a significant amount of speculative or "hot" money has exited Dubai as well, writes The Economist. This was because some investors had betted on the United Arab Emirates de-pegging its currency from the dollar in order to combat its double-digit inflation rate, and had hoped to profit from such a move. However, when they realised that this wasn't going to happen, they withdrew their money - as a result of which, there is currently significantly less money to be spent going around in the country's economy.

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