Qatar eyes law on property valuations

Qatar is planning to introduce a new law to regulate real estate valuations in order to prevent buyers and sellers from under-quoting market values.

The current lack of legislation regulating property evaluation has encouraged some in the industry to provide an incorrect valuation of a property in order to pay a lower registration fee when selling or buying land or buildings.

The Minister of Justice, Hussain bin Abdullah Al Ghanem, says that this practice has caused the state lose revenue, according to local daily The Peninsula.

In about two months a draft law should be ready, following the formation of a committee last year to frame an effective law based on the experiences of other countries. Al Ghanem said that the importance of property value regulations had become apparent amid the wealthy Gulf state's construction boom, which began a few years ago.

“The proposed law would certainly add more certainty to real estate transactions and is well over due, however it must be backed up by regulation to ensure that all valuers are professionally qualified... otherwise I don’t see how the proposed regulations will have any impact,” Edd Brookes, head of middle east valuations at DTZ, told Arabian Business Qatar.