Jumeirah Lakes Towers 60% Complete

About 60 per cent of the Jumeirah Lake Towers (JLT) development has been completed, Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC), the community's master developer and operator, said on Monday.

This milestone was achieved after Armada Group, a sub-developer, completed the third tower in its mixed-use cluster.

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UAE Banks To Make Dh3bn In Dubai World Provisions

The UAE banks could book up to Dh3 billion in provisions related to Dubai World's debt restructuring in the second half of this year, dampening the banking industry's performance, according to investment bank Shuaa Capital.

Sofia El Boury, a banking analyst at Shuaa Capital's Research Department, said all of the UAE banks have not come clear on their exposure to Dubai World "provisions which could range between Dh2 billion to Dh3bn in the second half considering the latest data."

Saudi Mortgage Law To Focus On Affordable Housing Shortage

Experts have raised a warning against the lack of low-cost accommodation in Saudi Arabia. According to real estate experts, this shortage in the affordable property will reflect in the agenda of the mortgage law, which Saudi Arabia is planning to implement soon.

“Most new developments are targeting the high-income segments of the population which constitute a relatively small share of existing demand,” said Rakesh Kunhiraman, who is the director at the consulting division of Oxford Business Group (OBG).

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Dubai Municipality To Use RERA Index

Dubai Municipality has come up with a new set of rules for the house owners of Dubai. The owners will now have to pay 5% Dubai Municipality (DM) housing fee, even if the property is vacant, provided there is a DEWA connection.

The Dubai Municipality has also mentioned that it is not ready to withstand any kind of cheating the residents are showcasing by listing rents which are very much below the prevailing market rates for the specific region. According to municipality, it will be forced to use RERA, the Real Estate Regulatory Agency, rent index if any kind of malpractice is witnessed.

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Pier Walk Sold Off By Quintain Estates

Quintain Estates and Development, a British property investor, has sold off Pier Walk which is situated at Greenwich Peninsula to the Germany-based DekaBank. The property is situated in a location which is close to Canary Wharf of London. DekaBank is the leading open-ended fund manager of Germany.

A whopping £97.1 million ($154.4m; Dh567m) was paid in cash by Deka Immobilien GmbH in exchange for the property, which is almost 6% up from the face value of the property that had been evaluated during March 2010. The investment yield will stand at 5.9%.

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REIDIN.com index reveals 6.99% increase in Dubai villa sales price between Q2 2009 and Q2 2010

REIDIN.com, the leading real estate information company covering emerging markets has today announced the June figures of its Sales Price Index for Dubai (SPID) part of its INDEXFocus-UAE product, an online database of proprietary real estate indices for UAE designed to accurately track price fluctuations in the residential real estate market.

INDEXFocus is a service dedicated to providing real estate indicies and other benchmark data. Sales Price Index for Dubai (SPID) is launched by REIDIN.com based on the actual transactions in an exclusive partnership with the Real Estate Regulatory Agency (RERA) and the Dubai Land Department (DLD). The service provides the Dubai market with a series of indices and data sets that can help improve transparency across the market and help real estate professionals to benchmark and analyse residential price trends.

Power and water cut from 1,654 Dubai homes in H1

Nearly 4,400 houses in Dubai have been found violating building and construction rules during the first half of 2010 as part of the One Villa, One Family campaign, a senior official has said. Omar AbdulRahman, head of Building Inspection Section at Dubai Municipality, said that 40,707 houses in Dubai had been inspected since start of the initiative aimed at reducing overcrowding in properties in the emirate.

AbdulRahman said about 1,654 houses had had its power and water cut off as a result of violations. He added that surprise visits in coordination with various government departments would continue and fines would be imposed. He said violations included bachelors staying in family areas, and multiple families staying in one house.

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Drake & Scull Wins Dohaland Flagship Cooling Project

The 182-million-Qatari-riyal worth design and development contract for the two cooling plants at Dohaland’s Musheireb project has been awarded to Drake & Scull International’s arm, Drake & Scull Water and Power. The firm will be responsible for the comprehensive design and development of these cooling plants which have cooling towers and chiller plants. The district cooling has a refrigeration capacity of 29,250 tonnes.

According to Mohammad Masoud Al Merri, Director-Projects, Dohaland, “We are delighted to award the design and build contract to Drake and Scull for the district cooling plants for the Musheireb project”. According to the contract, the designing and building of hilled water reticulation network having valves and valve chambers, the mechanical electrical and plumbing services, testing and commissioning of the plants will all be taken care of by Drake & Scull.

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Dubai Green Buiding's to receive incentives

According to reports from a Dubai government official, the Government is formulating a scheme for providing the green buildings having “green building code” with certain incentives. The plan is expected to be disclosed over the next two months.

“The government is working on an incentive plan for green buildings. Dubai has been on the forefront of introducing green concepts… now the code has gone into printing and will be released in two months”, said Essa Al Mai door, Assistant Director-General for Planning and Engineering, Dubai Municipality.


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Dubai Rental Index Being Revamped

The Land Department of Dubai is working on revamping the rental index, making it more comprehensive. As of Monday, the rent increase calculator on the Real Estate Regulatory Agency’s (Rera) website was not showing the requisite calculations from July 1 onwards with an alert saying, “no rental index available for the selected date”.

The first rent index in Dubai was released in January 2009, complied on the basis of rents during the second half of 2008. Rera says it is not mandatory for landlords to follow the rent index but it is just a guideline or a reference point in case of disputes.

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Saadiyat Beach Apartment Construction Gets A Nod

The first phase of Saadiyat Beach Apartments will soon kick off as The Tourism Development and Investment Company, which is the prime constructor of tourism, cultural, and residential destinations in Abu Dhabi, has assigned the development work to Abu Dhabi-based Dhabi Contracting Establishment. About 495 apartments will be constructed in the first phase.

Located in the centre of a Saadiyat Beach community, the plans have been deciphered with Arabian and Mediterranean elements. The first phase is expected to be ready by 2011 Q4.

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Dubai Real Estate Market Overview

‘Dubai Real Estate Market Overview – Q2 2010: June 2010’ covering the Dubai office, residential, retail and hospitality market segments from Jones Lang LaSalle, the world's leading real estate investment and advisory firm. It reports that tenants have greater opportunities due to increasing availability of space, declining rents, and improved lease terms as the property market begins to bottom out.

Highlights of the overview:

Dubai Real Estate Market Overview
Q2 2010
Market Highlights – Q2 / 2010

• The Dubai office market continues to fragment with a further decoupling between the overall market(which is experiencing increasing vacancies) and good quality buildings in the CBD (where there remainselective shortages). While average city-wide vacancies have increased further (to around 38%), only12% of the 7.5 million sq ft of completed space in single ownership within the CBD is currently vacant.
  

• Retail vacancies have increased to between 8% and 10% as competition intensifies and retailers haveclosed poorer performing stores. This is resulting in a flight to quality and increasing problems (brokentooth phenomenon) in poorer quality centres. The more enlightened centre managers are responding tochanging circumstances by seeking to proactively engage and offer more attractive and flexible terms totheir tenants.
  

• Supply in the residential sector continues to complete, with fewer delays being experienced than in theoffice market. While sales activity has increased and average prices have remained relatively stable,rentals have continued to decline significantly across Q2, particularly in respect of luxury / high end villaand apartment projects.

• The hotel market is the closest to the bottom of the cycle. Increased demand has resulted in a growth ofoccupancies during 2010, but average room rates and RevPAR continue to decline, especially in respectof city hotels.

Dubai Rental Clock – June 2010



















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Dubai Real Estate Transactions Grow In First Five Months

According to the Dubai Land Department, the transactions in the real estate sector have showcased a positive growth in the first five months of this year when compared to the corresponding period last year. 3,642 land sales worth Dh 25 billion have been recorded during this first five months. Out of the 3,169 residential properties in dubai that have been sold off since January 2010, 2,927 were apartments, of which 10 per cent have been mortgaged.

The total land area that has been sold off is about 62,815 square feet. According to the Dubai Focus section in reidin.com, in 2009, 4,961 residential lands were sold off. 3,750 mortgages worth Dh3 2 billion with an area of 95,460 square feet have been recorded during the first five month of 2010. According to the department's assistant director-general Mohammad Sultan Thani, "While we may see less value there are many more transactions on a daily basis compared to last year."

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Risk of Property Bubble of Asia Moderate

According to the international credit rating company Moody’s, even though the property prices have surged, there is only a moderate level of risk from the asset bubbles that have developed in Asia.

According to Deborah Schuler who is the Senior Vice-President at Moody's handling the ratings in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, the steps adopted by the government to ease the market have proven to be effective. "At the moment, we think asset bubbles are confined to the property sector and it's still only a moderate risk," she said.

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Luxurious Bahrain Properties Facing Price Fall

Asking prices for high-end apartments in Bahrain have dropped 20 per cent compared to 2009 as sales of freehold villas and apartments remain almost non-existent over the last two years, Knight Frank, the global real estate consultancy, said.
Sales of freehold villas and apartments have been almost non-existent in Bahrain over the last two years, which is indicative of the fact that investors are wary in these uncertain economic times and owner occupier demand for luxury property appears to have been satisfied at least in the short term, the report said. Also, the boom times of speculative purchasers enjoying healthy returns on investments by flipping off-plan properties for a profit are a distant phenomenon.
As many of the mixed-use schemes are experiencing construction delays, investors looking to generate rental returns on completed projects are similarly staying away.

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Dubai is still a key investor’s destination

A report from Moody's Investment Service asks the investors to be optimistic about Dubai and reap out of the lower property costs in the city as it still is one among the most preferred investment choices of investors. According to Faisal Hijazi, Business Development Manager, Rating Services and Islamic Finance at Moody's Dubai, revamping Dubai is not an easy and short process. The investors should keep this in mind and then invest in the city.
"But I think the investors should now take advantage of the available opportunities, which are numerous. Dubai still enjoys a good position in this respect and I think there are good investment opportunities in some sectors," Hijazi said.

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Absconding developers in the eye of law

Absconding developers will soon have to face harsh law for their inability to fulfill their obligations. The Ajman Real Estate Regulatory Agency (Arra) has taken the step to file cases, complaining to the police about some absconding developers. Emirate has now turned to law to make developers pay for their frailty. Soon there will be a spree of arrests made for developers failing their contractual commitment. The motive behind such a step is to resolve disputes through intervention.
Arra chief insists on resolving the problem between developer and the investor by encouraging mutual talks and this is providing ample time for considerations for the developers. The agency also seek to help t he investors who have invested in projects without opting for carefulness when choosing the developer and his project.

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Arabtec awarded AED 500m contract to build DAMAC Heights at Dubai Marina

DAMAC Properties has announced that it has awarded the main construction contract for its DAMAC Heights project at Dubai Marina to Arabtec. The AED 500million contract was signed this week and work is expected to commence on site as soon as Zetas complete the enabling works.
DAMAC Heights will be one of the company’s most iconic supertall projects and will occupy a prime position overlooking the Palm Jumeirah. It is within walking distance of another of DAMAC’s flagship projects, Ocean Heights, also being constructed by Arabtec. Work on Ocean Heights is due to be completed later this year.
In announcing the contract award, Chairman of DAMAC Properties Hussain Sajwani said: ‘We are delighted to announce that main construction work will be underway soon at one of our most significant projects in Dubai. We are pleased to work once again with Arabtec who are known for their ability to deliver architecturally challenging buildings and their consistent and solid reputation in the construction industry.

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Nakheel Developer won’t hike deposit fee for new sales

Master developer Nakheel continues to consolidate its project portfolio though has denied any raise in non-refundable deposit amount for new sales reservation contracts. This counters reports within the industry that Nakheel had stopped consolidation offers while it has increased the non-refundable deposit by five times of new contracts.
As per sources, Nakheel will determine projects that will remain on hold towards the end of the re-capitalisation process. "Projects have been prioritised following an assessment of construction stages, cost of completion, customer collections, and market supply and demand. We will have determined, which projects are likely to remain on hold towards the end of the recapitalisation process," the spokesperson said.

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