Qatar apartment rents fall 17% in 2009

Apartment rents in Qatar have fallen by 17 percent since the start of 2009, a new report by the Qatar Statistics Authority has revealed.

Rents in general declined in July by 0.8 percent and a further 1.7 percent last month with the largest fall seen in apartment rents, the authority said in a report published on Sunday.

The drop comes amid one of the worst downturns in the Gulf region’s real estate industry. Dubai has been hardest hit with rents in some part of the city falling more than 30 percent this year.

The report also showed that Qatar’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) fell by 0.8 percent in August, following a 0.3 percent drop the previous month.

The authority said the country's CPI now stood at 123.78, down 3.6 percent from the first month of 2009.

The index is a measure of the general price level of goods and services consumed by the average household in Qatar.

The authority said the index has been falling since the beginning of 2009 following a period of high inflation in 2008.

In the latest report,clothing and footwear prices declined 0.2 percent in July and again in August. The index for clothing and footwear prices was now 8.4 percent lower than January 2009 with significant decreases seen in prices of women’s clothing and fabrics.

The report said that economy class airfares reversed the June increase with a 10.5 percent decrease in July and a further 7.8 percent decrease in August.

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