Win-win as Emaar seals Bawadi land deal

Two months ago, having been forced to scrap a land-for-stock deal in Dubai, critics were suggesting the end of the Emaar gravy train. With Dubai property contributing 85% of the company's revenues, and new land increasingly hard (and expensive) to come by, there would be tough times ahead while Emaar waited for overseas projects to come good.

This morning, the picture looks a whole lot healthier. Emaar has agreed to invest just over $1bn in around 63 million sqft of land in the Bawadi, Dubailand, development. At a stroke the company will double its Dubai land portfolio and secures prime pitch in the one of the emirate's biggest projects. Among other things Bawadi is envisaged as the longest chain of luxury hotels in the world along a 10km stretch which will add 51 luxury hotels and more than 60,000 rooms to Dubai, plus the world's biggest shopping strip.

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Win-win as Emaar seals Bawadi land deal

Two months ago, having been forced to scrap a land-for-stock deal in Dubai, critics were suggesting the end of the Emaar gravy train. With Dubai property contributing 85% of the company's revenues, and new land increasingly hard (and expensive) to come by, there would be tough times ahead while Emaar waited for overseas projects to come good.

This morning, the picture looks a whole lot healthier. Emaar has agreed to invest just over $1bn in around 63 million sqft of land in the Bawadi, Dubailand, development. At a stroke the company will double its Dubai land portfolio and secures prime pitch in the one of the emirate's biggest projects. Among other things Bawadi is envisaged as the longest chain of luxury hotels in the world along a 10km stretch which will add 51 luxury hotels and more than 60,000 rooms to Dubai, plus the world's biggest shopping strip.

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Go Mena!

Sama Dubai isn’t the first Gulf company to invest in Tunisia, but it is currently the biggest. By some distance.

The property unit of government-owned Dubai Holding is to spend $14 billion creating a luxury real estate development north of the Tunisian capital. The 837 hectare development will include apartments, offices, trade centers and hotels. Local newspapers claim the deal could create 150,000 jobs, doubly good news in a country with a jobless rate of 14.3%.

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Brace yourselves

In the Spring of last year, Trends magazine canvassed the bosses of some of Dubai’s biggest real estate players to get some idea of where things were going in the property market. While mostly bullish – as you’d expect – two predicted a “softening” around February this year. Supply, they said, would finally catch up with demand, to an extent at least, and a correction could well be on the cards. Other analysts I spoke to were less optimistic. By October, according to some, a crash was imminent.

Well, February has come and gone, and there’s been nary a “correction,” never mind the kind of crash that your average hard-pressed (and non-property owning) expat has been hoping for. What’s happening? Was everyone mistaken? If the latest research is anything to go by, absolutely not. The supply-demand crunch has merely been subjected to the same thing that frustrates so many off-plan buyers in the region: construction delays. A correction is coming, and it could be a lot, lot bigger than anyone was expecting.

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