Dubai property sales have fallen ‘off a cliff’ since start of Middle East war

One buying agent said that every one of the ‘super-high-net-worth guys’ he had sold to in the past 18 months has now left Dubai. Photograph: Fadel Senna/AFP/Getty View image in fullscreen One buying agent said that every one of the ‘super-high-net-worth guys’ he had sold to in the past 18 months has now left Dubai. Photograph: Fadel Senna/AFP/Getty Dubai property sales have fallen ‘off a cliff’ since start of Middle East war Sellers of luxury villas have wiped tens of millions of pounds off asking prices, with sales down 19% in May from the previous month Property sales in Dubai have fallen “off a cliff”, a leading market watcher has said, after war in the Middle East forced a dramatic slowdown in one of the world’s most expensive real estate markets. Sales in the city dropped 19% in May compared with the previous month, accelerating from a 4% drop in April, the researcher ValuStrat found. Transactions are now below half their level compared with the same point last year, it said. “The ready homes market has not recorded an annual decline of this magnitude since the pandemic,” said Haider Tuaima, head of real estate research at ValuStrat, a Dubai-based consultancy which has been tracking the city’s property market since 2014. Influencers sold the world a fantasy Dubai – and now it’s gone in a puff of missile smoke | Gaby Hinsliff Read more A separate study from the Dubai-based research firm Reidin found that property worth 22.5bn dirhams ($6.1bn/£4.5bn) was sold in May, 42% below the April figure. It was about half the 46.6bn dirhams in the month before the conflict began, according to the figures, which were first reported by Bloomberg. Dubai, which is on the eastern side of the Arabian peninsula, had had a frenzied trade in property in recent years, boosted by a wave of high-earners attracted to the city’s zero income tax policy. But the outbreak of war in the Middle East in late February has rocked the market, with an Iranian missile hitting the five-star hotel in Dubai’s famed Palm Jumeirah area in March. It remains unclear how quickly the market may recover if a peace deal between the US and Iran holds firm. Sellers of luxury villas and flats in the city have wiped tens of millions of pounds off asking prices, according to property agents. Yasin Valimulla, a buying agent in Dubai who specialises in properties worth at least $10m (£7.5m), said that the few home sales still going through were at a 20%-25% discount to their value before the conflict. “We have sold to super-high-net-worth guys in the last year and a half – every single one them has now left Dubai,” he said. “There was a lot of panic in March and there is still not much clarity to this day,” he said. “Western European buyers are now more reluctant to buy properties here. I think they want to wait out maybe a year, even two years. It depends on how things play out.” It marks a sharp correction for Dubai, which was the busiest city in the world last year for luxury real estate. The