Property in Dubai has fallen in price for seven consecutive quarters. Prime prices in July were 10 per cent below levels from two years ago. In the second quarter of this year, home sales slumped almost a third on the previous year. The Gulf city-state’s recent travails would have most high-end estate agents crying into their champagne cocktails.
David Godchaux, who runs local agent Core, source of the sales figures, is having none of it. “Over the past 18 months, the market has lost between 6 per cent and 15 per cent, depending where you look,” he says. “But this is Dubai’s first really healthy correction.”
His point is that Dubai has seen much worse. In the wake of the financial crisis, following a furious speculative boom, property prices slumped, losing 40 per cent in the first three months of 2009 alone, according to the agency Knight Frank. By November that year, helped by huge losses at Nakheel, its property division, the government-owned investment vehicle Dubai World announced it would delay repayment on $59bn of debts, raising the spectre of the largest sovereign default since that of Argentina in 2001.