We have a lot of expats working in Dubai that are making money. Each new Building that comes up has at least 200 Units in it on average that are $250K U.S.D. on up these days. I am wondering how many expats we have here in Dubai these days that are making over $5000 a month to be able to afford one of these places? Locals live in Villas and the are labor job workers have their own accomodation which we won't get into.
The jobs section does not have that many jobs available for people who want good paying jobs in Dubai. Currently there are more units popping up then there are people moving into them or high paying jobs popping up in Dubai which is why the Classifieds section of the Real Estate is only getting thicker and thicker by the day or week. I have two units I tried to sell, they all tell me that the unit prices are going down because there are so many units available on the market for people to choose from so in order for my units to sell they have to be below market price to attract the buyer to buy my unit over another unit The other problem is that people are having trouble selling their units because there is no financing available these days except for maybe Emaar. So the Buyer has to fork out all the cash up front or go through a nightmare to try and get financing at over 7%. If the building is not up and finished no bank will finance. If the owner of a flat can not fork over all of the money of the flat by hand over time then he or she defaults on the flat
Good Post.
You have echoed my postings on here, but with a slightly different perspective.
I read many posts on here asking about expat packages etc etc mainly including salaries.
The concensous of opinion is that 20k dhs a month and above is brilliant.
Obviously we all have different perceptions of what we think is a maintainable salary to match a sustainable way of life in terms of how we choose to live.
This is where probably where my views differ greatly to many expats. This is however, only ever relative in terms of our own wealth and circumstances. I can only speak for myself but i dont consider anything like 20k Dhs a month to be considered a good wage, some of us earn that in a week.
So if i were to apply the same critera to say an expat that considers him or herself well off, with that sort of money irrespective of how much value the job benefits are, it doesnt in my humble opinion make a way of life sustainable to move oneself on, merely it allows oneself to remain and maintain a current reasonably good standard of living.
Sadly those that poo poo'd the idea of buying property in Dubai back subsequent to May 2002, have to some extent eat humble pie. I can remember expats who thought the were the dogs nuts blagging in the bar "all this will go wrong, the Shiek can take it all away, it will never amount to anything, its just a flash in the pan", blah blah".
People like myself that are savvy to seeing a good deal with an element of risk loved it. I can remember May 15th 2002 very well, when walking into an empty Emaar sales office and being asked which ones did i want at almost give away prices, geeez i was like a kid in a sweet shop.
Had all those expats back then instead of bad mouthing something actually had the Confidence and money to do what i did, there would be many more wealthy expats than there are at present. My point here is that they couldnt.
This is because the ability to do what i did was limited to them. However good an expats life is within reason, i firmly believe they didnt and havent got the ability, due to lack of earnings. Lets assume an expat moved to dubai in 2000 on a salary of 25k Dhs. Lets also assume a resonable but not swish standard of living. Now lets assume he saved 10k Dhs a year. By this summer 2006, that person would not even have accumulated enough money/savings to even put a deposit down.
I am fortunate that i dont need to borrow any money to purchase any of my properties, whether it be UK or Dubai. To be a serious player in any property markey you have to have seious means to start playing the bricks and concrete game.
I do not wish to belittle or offend you in any way, but your reasons about your 2 properties and others like you is fairly par for the course in any established property market, and is music to my ears.
As a true developer i got in at the beginning, dumped off what i didnt want at the crest, and will ultimately buy back at a loss to people like yourself. A few weeks ago i went over to JBR to see if any bargins about, the sales guy said "ohhhh yes we got these one beds @1.3 million Dhs". I nearly wet myself laughing. I will wait 12/18 months when people like yourself have found the end of artificially high prices are gone, due to supply increasing as demand dwindles. I will guarantee i will get those appartments for the original sale price of 500k Dhs, and i wont pay one diram over. At a rental of 50k dhs a year i will do very nicely thank you
There will sadly be some serious casualties in the next 12/24 months, with huge losses. In 2004 there were many wanabee's that thought they were smart jumping on the gravy train, they are all going to loose a lot of money.