Dubai real estate agent Laura Adams remembers the Iranian homebuyer because of how he wanted to pay.
“He literally put a suitcase on my desk, opened it up and it was full of 1,000 dirham notes,” the Carlton Real Estate managing director said in an interview. “I asked him to go across the road to Western Union and get it exchanged for a manager’s check, half a million dirhams ($136,000).”
Cash is king in the Persian Gulf emirate’s rebounding property market, limiting the power of regulators to control rising prices that fueled the last property bubble by imposing restrictions on mortgage loans to foreigners. Buyers from Iran to Russia to Greece are paying cash in as many as 70 percent of Dubai home purchases, up from 49 percent in 2007, according to researcher Reidin.com.
Dubai Suitcases of Cash Circumvent Loan Rules: Mortgages - Bloomberg
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