A Blog by the Editor of The Middle East Journal

Putting Middle Eastern Events in Cultural and Historical Context

Friday, October 15, 2010

Hunting for Housing?: A Bargain in Dubai if You Don't Mind Heights

We all know Dubai has been hit hard by the property values crash, so much so that the World's Tallest Building®, the Burj Khalifa (AKA the Burj Dubai before Abu Dhabi bought the naming rights), has a major fire sale going on because only 8% of the giant tower is occupied: the cheapest studios starting at 80,000 UAE dirhams annually. or some $21,780. I suppose that's not really that bad (though it's more than I pay in mortgage annually, but I'm not in the world's tallest building), and it's a 40% cut from the list.

Of course it's renting, and the article doesn't state the size of a studio, and I still can't afford it, but it almost is starting to sound affordable. Not to me, but it's not pricing itself out of the depressed Dubai property market I suspect. So what began as wretched excess has become affordable? But can it sustain itself? We'll see. Prices slashed! Unprecedented bargains! You can see Iran from your house!

1 comment:

David Mack said...

Keep making your mortgage payments, Mike. Renting only looks better in the DC area, but here it is a temporary phenomenon. In Dubai, it has long been the smart option for anyone except speculators. Even in the U.S., the housing bubble was a shock to most people. Greed was an even larger factor in the Dubai bubble, where few were innocent of short term thinking.