Strong comeback: Buyers snap up homes, commercial properties worth $1.2 bln

With buyers snapping up approximately 600 property units per week in July, sales activity in Dubai’s real estate sector is bouncing back from the setbacks triggered by the coronavirus, according to the Dubai Land Department (DLD).

Sales are returning to normal levels, the DLD said in a report on Monday, with investors logging 2,404 deals valued at 4.69 billion UAE dirhams ($1.2 billion) during July, bringing the year-to-year total to 18,168 commercial and residential sales transactions, worth 36.99 billion dirhams.

July’s real-estate transactions went up by 3.7 percent from June, averaging around 600 villas, apartments and commercial units sold in the emirate every seven days.

The value of July’s mortgages, which reached 18.26 billion dirhams for 1,153 transactions, was also 3.09 times more than the value recorded in June and 3.36 times more than the value reported a year earlier.

Investor appetite

Transactions involving secondary properties also dominated the sales activity in July, representing 70.4 percent of the transactions, while the off-plan segment accounted for only 29.6 percent.

The latest data, which are highlighted in the fifth edition of Dubai’s official sales price index, otherwise known as Mo’asher, indicate that investor appetite has returned after the lockdown, and this is thanks partly to the competitive prices.

Another reason behind the positive trend is that people are increasingly looking for bigger properties as they now spend most of their time at home.

“The number of transactions has increased significantly. Since the ease in the lockdown and despite the Eid holidays, the majority of people have chosen to stay in Dubai. In addition, attractive pricing has lured many investors and end-users, and we have seen the number of transactions return to normal levels,” said Lynnette Abad, director of research and data at Property Finder.

Abad noted that July recorded 493 sales transactions for ready villas and townhouse properties, which was historically the highest in the segment for a single month.

Index

Overall, the sales index, which is a collaboration between DLD and Property Finder, registered a slight decline, from 1.113 in June to 1.108 in July, down by 0.36 percent.

The apartments index value for the month stood at 1.171, down from 1.179 in June 2020, while the index price was pegged at 1,010,882 UAE dirhams.

Compared to the last six months, the index registered a decrease of 0.26 percent.