Do you see a sign?

Cityscape Dubai is in town. The euphoria is certainly missing. The punters were nowhere to be seen. The media has reported that the total floor space at the exhibition has in fact dropped by a whopping 30% this year.

It is now almost a year since the property market nosedived and let loose fear and chaos right across every section of the city. Redundancies piled on while Dubai shot into the lime light for all the wrong reasons.

A year later, a lot of the dust seems to have settled down. Cityscape appeared to be a lot quieter this year and a sense of reality seems to have set in.

If you have been following the local press, you'd have observed that property prices appear to be bottoming out though some surveys forecast that rentals will continue to drop over the next quarter. Having said that most of the current buyers will have lost 30% to 50% of the value of their property. With the buyer confidence at such low levels and banks still unwilling to reduce the interest rates (despite the significant drop in EIBOR), it is unlikely we will see a recovery anytime soon. Add to this the supply that is expected to come into the market over the next 12 months thus tilting the balance towards oversupply.

It will probably be several years until we see a sign of recovery.