Remember when Dubai was the hottest commercial property market in the world.
Commercial property, apartments, serviced offices – whatever you invested in, your money seemed to double or even triple every few months.
Well, the property crash has put a stop to all of that. There are now hundreds of unsold units and acres and acres of vacant property in the shape of palm trees, butterflies and even countries. These ridiculous property developments really shouldn’t have seen the light of day, let alone have had hundreds of millions of pounds thrown at them.
But, it seems that they are made of stern stuff in Dubai, they have turned up their noses at the downturn and are set to proceed, full steam ahead.
‘We have 220 projects that are going on. We have evaluated projects and those are moving forward,’ Marwan bin Ghalaita, chief executive of the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) told reporters on the sidelines of a conference. ‘Any project that is not good for investors will not go on. We are evaluating all the projects now.’
Ghalaita declined to say how many projects had been cancelled. In December, he said, since the financial downturn, RERA had scrapped 115 projects that existed only as architects’ drawings, but ‘less than ten’ projects upon which construction had started.
Earlier on Wednesday, Sultan Butti bin Mejrin, director general of the Dubai Land Department, told the conference that property transactions worth 123 billion dirhams ($33.49 billion) were concluded in 2010.
Dubai’s property sector has been hit hard by the downturn, with billions of dollars worth of projects put on hold or cancelled. Property prices slumped by as much as 60 percent.
High-profile projects that Dubai has put on hold or cancelled as a result of the downturn include Dubai Properties’, Tiger Woods residential and golf course project and developer Nakheel’s, kilometre-high tower
Maybe we could take a leaf from their book, perhaps the best way out of this slump is to simply charge ahead regardless and develop more commercial property. Then again that may be very foolish.
