Finding the green shoots of recovery in Dubai's property market - ArabianbusinessIf you look hard enough, there are green shoots of recovery in Dubai's real estate market, especially in the prime residential sector.
Although prices in the emirate's prime market as a whole were down by 3.7 percent in the year to the third quarter of 2020, a closer analysis reveals pockets of stability and even increases.
Knight Frank has launched its latest Prime Global Cities Index for Q3 which shows prices are still falling - by 1.7 percent in the latest three-month period. Not a surprise given years of oversupply and now a weaker economic backdrop.
But Taimur Khan, research manager at Knight Frank Middle East, told Arabian Business that the rate of decline is now slowing, where a year ago prices were falling by more than 5 percent.
"In more established prime areas we are beginning to see prices stabilise and even increase in some cases, for example on the Palm Jumeirah," he said.
Prices on the Palm seem to have reached their trough in May and since the average transaction price per square foot has increased for five consecutive months and now stands 4.2 percent higher, he revealed.
Khan told Arabian Business that one of the notable trends seen this year in the prime market in Dubai has been the transition away from the primary market and towards the secondary market.
In the year to date to October 2019, 56 percent of property purchases were off-plan purchases and over the same period in 2020, this number has fallen to 41 percent.
