The UAE‘s beleaguered property market has bottomed out and will start showing signs of recovery by the end of 2011, the country’s Minister of Economy said Sunday.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Invest Malaysia event in Abu Dhabi, Sultan Al Mansouri said the market would begin showing realistic growth by the close of the year.
“I believe the worst is over for property. And in my estimation, at the end of 2011 and beginning of 2012, we will see positive movement,” he told Arabian Business.
“It won’t be a graph like before, but we will see growth which is gradual and more realistic.”
Analysts earlier this month predicted that Dubai property prices, already 60 percent off their peak, will plunge a further 10 percent over the next two years as fresh supply floods the market.
A property boom in Dubai collapsed at the end of 2008 when it was hit by the global financial crisis and the Gulf state’s debt crisis.
In oil-rich Abu Dhabi, which weathered the financial crisis better than Dubai, prices have already fallen 45 percent from their peak.
Mansouri said concerns about oversupply were exaggerated as project cancellations had thinned the real estate pipeline.
“A lot of the issues during 2010 have now been resolved and a lot of projects stopped or redesigned, so there is better organisation in the market. I am not worried about oversupply,” he said.
He declined to commit to a forecast for economic growth in the UAE in 2011.
“There will be growth and it will be positive, but no finance minister in the world can correctly forecast what is going to happen with the global economy,” he said.
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