Construction

During the last real estate boom in 2006, Dubai was home to 30,000 cranes, 24% of the world’s total. Although many of these came to a halt as the local economy was hit by the global financial crisis, the city looks set to reclaim its title as the crane capital of the world, according to Simon Gray, the managing director of Chesterton MENA.

As Dubai prepares to stage the World Expo in 2020, the focus of development is shifting from the central axis and moving to secondary locations in the south and east. The Dubai Municipality’s medium-growth scenario forecasts a population of 2.8m by 2020, while city planners are aiming to accommodate 3.4m in time for the Expo. Consequently, another 25,000 ha of land will...

The delivery of affordable housing has become a major conundrum across the entire MENA region in recent years. According to Jones Lang LaSalle, the affordable housing deficit across the MENA region stood at 3.5m units in 2011. The largest contributor to this is Egypt, which currently has a shortfall of 1.5m units, while Morocco and Saudi Arabia also have substantial...

The bursting of Dubai’s property bubble in 2009 led to a more cautious attitude towards the real estate sector. A number of regulations were put in place to discourage the flipping of residential units and confidence in property as an asset class has been restored, with prices rapidly moving towards the levels achieved prior to the global financial crisis in 2008....

With a robust rate of economic growth over the past year contributing to rapidly increasing residential sales prices, confidence has gradually returned to Dubai’s property market despite the impact of the global economic crisis of 2008-09. In late September 2014, at the 13th annual Cityscape Global exhibition – an informal barometer of the real estate climate in the...