While all of us are talking excitedly and ominously about IT Doom etc, and the real estate fiasco in the US, I was shocked to see the following news item in boingboing. Wow. I knew that a significant population of Kerala is settled in the Gulf (Saudi/Kuwait/…). It looks like the dream city is crashing down as well.
On the night of December 31, 2008 alone more than 80 vehicles were found at the airport. “Sixty cars were seized on the first day of this year,” director general of Airport Security, Mohammed Bin Thani, told DNA over the phone. On the same day, deputy director of traffic, colonel Saif Mohair Al Mazroui, said they seized 22 cars abandoned at a prohibited area in the airport.
Faced with a cash crunch and a bleak future ahead, there were no goodbyes for the migrants — overwhelmingly South Asians, mostly Indians – just a quiet abandoning of the family car at the airport and other places.
While 2,500 vehicles have been found dumped in the past four months outside Terminal III, which caters to all global airlines, Terminal II, which is only used by Emirates Airlines, had 160 cars during the same period…
“The construction and real estate industry has been hit following the global slowdown and the direct fallout is that professionals working in the realty industry are rapidly losing their jobs,” said a senior media professional, in-charge of a realty supplement in Dubai. “In fact, my weekly real estate supplement usually had 60% advertisement and ran into 300-odd pages. In the last seven weeks, it’s down to 80 pages and with fewer advertisments,” he added.
(via Boingboing)
Well! World wide crisis also effect the Dubai property and rental business … From some reports have now concluded that the market will experience a 10% to 15% decline in rent and sales prices by the end of 2009 and in the middle of the year 2010 there will be an upward trend in market. So the best strategy will be to buy the property and invest for the future.