Land prices hit developers

Land banks held by developers have lost as much as 30 per cent of their value from their peak last year, as projects across the Emirates fall victim to the global property downturn.

Developers have been slow to write down the losses, meaning that the real value of land on the books of publicly traded developers may be overstated, according to analysts.

“I have seen nobody take a negative impairment charge on land,” said Bobby Sarkar, a property analyst at Al Mal Capital. “None of these guys put their land banks through some kind of stress test every quarter.”