On Dubai’s luxury Palm Jumeirah island, a 10-bedroom mansion sold for a record $76 million in April. Demand for villas is soaring and a futuristic building is being constructed nearby with a 90-meter-high infinity pool and a giant tank of jellyfish.
Yet, right opposite, stand the concrete skeletons of four unfinished buildings from a stalled 20-year-old project called the Dubai Pearl — a reminder of how quickly booms can go bust.
Last year, Dubai saw the biggest increase in high-end property prices globally, partly because the government’s nimble response to the coronavirus pulled in money from around the world. Prime real-estate prices rose 56% in 2021, according to Knight Frank. That topped every other major city and far exceeded increases of 1.3% in London, 3.6% in New York and 19% in San Francisco.
In the midst of Dubai’s resurgence, relics from the property crash that nearly bankrupted the emirate in 2009 still dot its glitzy skyline. Yet the frenzy for real-estate investments in this city has been running so high that mammoth unfinished projects like the Pearl have come into the spotlight once more — even though they are reminders of past excesses.
The Pearl is on a plot of land situated inside a freezone run by business park operator Tecom Group, which is on the verge of listing on the stock market. Tecom is still owed money from a years-ago sale of the Pearl land, according to documents seen by Bloomberg News and people familiar with the matter. Bloomberg News could not independently verify who currently owns the project, which went through a number of developers in its two-decade saga, or the land on which it was meant to be built.
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