Dubai property prices may fall 20% - Emaar chief

Posted by: joe simms Tuesday, 27 January 2009 6:26 PM[UAE] - usa

Since when is a market logical? The market has the ability to remain illogical for much longer than one can remain solvent. (paraphrasing Lord Keynes) Logic loses money in this environment

Posted by: as Tuesday, 27 January 2009 4:50 PM[UAE]

Iam sure this will go down more and more, just waiting for that

Posted by: Louie Tedesco Tuesday, 27 January 2009 2:19 PM[UAE] - UAE

Many astute comments from the readership, in particular the views and opinions that the end of the downward price spiral in the real estate market has yet to be reached. More importantly, none of us has an idea as to how low the price of depressed real estate here can sink. When the people who build your villas, townhouses, apartments and "Pentominiums" (?) are paid such humble salaries -assuming that they even get paid regularly- and are using the most cheaply sourced materials, the value of such housing can never be compared to quality structures built by competent construction workers who earn a living wage under working conditions which are much safer. People have no problem paying the price for a property that was built by skilled people that were paid fair wages from developers who base their profit margin on fair market value. Here, buyers of property that was built by menial labourers who earn $200 monthly are gouged by developers claiming comparisons to London, Paris, Tokyo, New York, etcetera. If you visit or stay in a 17th century, or earlier, European sandstone building or a 1930's Manhattan skyscraper you may notice substantial qualitative differences to what is being built here. And 17th century / 1930 build-quality has improved since then. Unless you're buying a wood frame house, it'll last you a lifetime and the next three generations of your family too - even in poor ambient weather environments. Will your Palm or Arabian Ranches villa do that? I think not. Current real estate prices here still remain much above the original offering price of developers during the launch of the various projects. The real beneficiaries are those who bought early on and still own the property. Even in a depressed market, they still likely will have doubled their initial early investment - good for them! Instead, I was fortunate to find vintage objets de art on auction and my investment grew ten-fold. There's also money which can be made outside of real estate?and I do own property, but not here.

Posted by: Ed Tuesday, 27 January 2009 1:14 PM[UAE]

My girlfriend sold her place at the New Marina complete in June 2008. It was a single bedroom place with peeping ocian views. What would that actually be worth at the moment.

Posted by: hytham Tuesday, 27 January 2009 12:31 PM[UAE]

oh guys, most of you are real estate speculators (like me), now you are blaming real estate companies but also we were not reasonable beleiving that it is going up forever. i think in the expensive area the price would decrease 60-77% from its peak. but for the reasonable priced areas the decline will be much less because the demand will be high for this units in the troubled economy that we live in. if we start stop panicking things will get better.