00:00Zainab, talk to us about the impact the war has had on Dubai house prices so far.
00:05Well, the impact is exactly what you would expect.
00:08We have seen a decline in both the property prices across the city, in some areas more than others.
00:14But overall, in the index that we use, tracks over 70 locations.
00:19We're looking at around 6% decline on average.
00:22But some areas, of course, declined more than others.
00:26When we look at the volume of transactions, the numbers, the money, it's actually less by a fifth.
00:32But also the number of transactions, we've seen about 13,000 transactions in March compared with around 16,000 the
00:39month before the war started.
00:42What are developers saying?
00:43What developers are mostly looking at right now is what they're going to be able to sell in the future.
00:50There is the primary market here or the off-plan market makes up about 70% of Dubai's property sales
00:56on any given day.
00:58And this big chunk of the market, there is a fear that would be the most impacted because it requires
01:04when you buy a house that's going to be completed in three or four years,
01:09you really need certainty on how things are going to be at that time.
01:13And for now, everyone is expecting that you might see a slowdown in that part of the market for a
01:18while until things stabilize and we get more idea of population within Dubai,
01:24whether the population growth will continue, and also in terms of construction costs, because construction costs have gone up quite
01:33a bit because of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which is still closed.
01:36Yeah. And Zeydab, have there been any new sweeteners or incentives to bring buyers and new renters to the market?
01:45We have seen quite a bit of developers launching projects in March, which was truly astonishing to me.
01:51I would have never expected any developers to bring more products to the market, but we've seen some of them
01:56do that.
01:57And what they tell me is sales are continuing.
02:00One developer told me he was surprised.
02:03He was like, I did not expect anybody would be buying, but we still have sales continuing.
02:07Because some people thought the market went up so much that any dip would be an opportunity to get in,
02:13especially those who see themselves as always going to be in Dubai with no plans to leave anywhere else.
02:19So on that end, you have that part of the market kind of giving you a bit of an assurance
02:25and showing resilience.
02:26But also what happens with the Strait of Hormuz and how that is all resolved within the region will weigh
02:35on demand going forward.
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