INTERNATIONAL
though after strong 2007-8 sales the market has become quieter and development has been slowed. The Wave is still targeting 4,000 units, but with a planned completion date of 2018 for the last phase, obviously has timing flexibility. Taif Real Estate is currently selling property at The Wave, with a small two bed apartment listed at 152,000 rials
(about £242,000) and a 4 bed villa at 270,000 rials (£431,000). Prospects for investors don’t look particularly good. CBRE’s middle east
team says that a reduced expatriate population as ‘Omanisation’ of the jobs
market continues has led to subdued rental rates despite the country’s good economic growth; rents fell by 13 per cent in a year. Rental stock has expanded significantly in suburban areas of the capital,
Muscat. Cluttons also believes that the bottom of the market hasn’t yet been reached. The team notes that though the August 2010 release at the Wave was 95 per cent taken up in a month, the latest release (at reduced prices) hasn’t yet sold out.
Top: skyscrapers and office
buildings of the Doha Financial District Skyline, Qatar. Inset:
Sand dunes and moon in the Arabian desert.
market is stabilising, particularly at major planned developments such as The Pearl, but the sales market is seeing few transactions and prices dropped 3 - 6 per cent in Q4 2010. Asteco does mention, though, that the FIFA announcement has led to a spurt of interest from buyers. As with other Gulf markets, the middle and low end of the market is under- supplied while the top end is seeing a glut. Villas, in particular, have been poor performers, partly because a new law prevents them being used as commercial premises.
“Omanisation of the jobs market has led to rents falling by 13 per cent in a year.”
STARRY QATAR Qatar is one of the stars of the Gulf at the moment, as host of the 2022 football World Cup. USD 65bn is expected to be spent on infrastructure for this event, with an extra 80,000 hotel rooms to be built in the next few years. It’s a small country, with its 1.1m population, of which three-quarters are expatriate workers, but it’s a major gas exporter, and has seen GDP growth of 16 per cent in recent years. But now, the market remains lacklustre, according to Asteco Property Management’s report. There’s evidence that the rental
46 APRIL 2011 PROPERTYdrum
BAHRAIN BARGAINS That’s also a big problem for Bahrain, according to Khaled al Mashaan, chairman of developer Alargan. “The high end market has been saturated,” he says. Both rents and sales prices continued to fall last year, Knight Frank saw rents down 6 per cent for apartments in the last six months of 2010, but 11 per cent for villas. The fact that Knight Frank describes this performance as ‘relatively strong’ gives an idea of how bad things are. Cluttons’ view is
downbeat. “Dealing with the oversupply and reduced profitability remain the major challenges facing the economy,” the agent says. However, master- planned projects such as the Amwaj Islands appear to be a relatively bright spot,
Tanks on the
streets as Arabs protest.
with lower rental declines than the
average property (10 per cent against 30 per cent for other areas).
QATAR
Expatriates in particular prefer to rent in such projects, which has kept their yields relatively stable.
THE OIL-LESS EMIRATE Ras el Khaima is a little known Emirate, and one, unusually, with no oil at all. Instead, it’s become the UAE’s leading cement producer. It has also become a ‘holiday emirate’ and is now creating its own artificial islands. The draw here is that Ras el Khaima’s prices are a quarter the price of Dubai’s.
SECRET SAUDI So far, no mention of Saudi Arabia. There’s a good reason for that; it’s still difficult for foreigners to buy property there, unless they are resident. Countries such as Oman have visa-for-property schemes so that buyers of a home in a major project automatically get a resident’s visa; Saudi doesn’t, and the restrictions are very tight. There’s also a minimum five year holding period. Saudi also has the typical imbalance of building, with most developments clustered at the top end of the market, while 75 per cent of Saudis have less than SAR 2,000 a month income (that’s just £327) according to Cluttons.
‘The high end of the market has been saturated and
rents and sale prices
are both falling.’ KHALED AL MASHAAN ALARGAN
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