Middle East: As Property Prices Boom, Potential Buyers Ask “Where is the Closest Vertiport to be Located?”

Some­thing extra­or­di­nary is hap­pen­ing in the Mid­dle East. There is a prop­er­ty boom occur­ring which dwarfs the excess­es the UK expe­ri­enced in pre­vi­ous decades.

The UK’s independent.co.uk pub­lished a fea­ture this week high­light­ing this almost fren­zied pur­chas­ing from over­seas investors who are sell­ing up invest­ments in the West and plough­ing their mon­ey into the per­ceived future yel­low brick roads of the MidEast.

And these are not your postage stamp look-a-like prop­er­ties present­ly being built in the UK. These homes are ele­gant, large, indi­vid­ual and plush with up-to-date tech­nolo­gies includ­ed.

One recent­ly-built estate in Dubai with over 100 homes that includes a new­ly-con­struct­ed lake sur­round­ing the prop­er­ties, were all sold in four and a half hours after com­ing on to the mar­ket. 

In fact, Dubai real estate trans­ac­tions hit a record USD34 bil­lion in Q2 as off-plan sales soared 80 per­cent. And in just one week last month, USD3.9 bil­lion worth of trans­ac­tions includ­ing two Palm Jumeirah apart­ments sell­ing for USD20 mil­lion each, took place.  

The total val­ue of real estate projects cur­rent­ly planned or under con­struc­tion stands at an esti­mat­ed and stag­ger­ing USD1.68 tril­lion, up from USD1.38 tril­lion a year ear­li­er, accord­ing to com­mer­cial real estate firm CBRE.

The Palm Jumeirah in Dubai (Get­ty Images/iStockphoto)

The num­ber of homes worth USD10 mil­lion or more sold in Dubai held steady in the first half of this year despite a drop in list­ings. A total of 190 homes worth an over­all USD3.2 bil­lion were sold in the six months to the end of June com­pared with 189 prop­er­ties for USD3.3 bil­lion in the same peri­od of 2023, accord­ing to pro­vi­sion­al data from prop­er­ty con­sul­tan­cy Knight Frank.

Faisal Dur­rani, Knight Frank’s Head of Research for Mid­dle East and North Africa (MENA), com­ment­ed, “This is a strong sign of the ‘buy-to-hold’ buy­er pro­file that has tak­en root in the mar­ket.” 

He con­tin­ued, “The trend sug­gests inter­na­tion­al high-net worth indi­vid­u­als are large­ly focused on pur­chas­ing homes in the city for per­son­al use, rather than to ‘flip’, which was a defin­ing fea­ture of pre­vi­ous prop­er­ty mar­ket cycles.”

Home to the world’s tallest tow­er, the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates’ Dubai is the Mid­dle East’s biggest tourism and trade hub, attract­ing a record 17.15 mil­lion inter­na­tion­al overnight vis­i­tors last year.

The city-state was quick to reopen after the pan­dem­ic. That, togeth­er with mas­sive infra­struc­ture spend­ing, gen­er­ous income tax poli­cies and relaxed social and visa rules, lured thou­sands of for­eign­ers, includ­ing Rus­sians amid war in Ukraine.

Under a 10-year plan known as D33, Dubai is seek­ing to grow its econ­o­my by invest­ing in tourism, turn­ing its local finan­cial cen­tre into one of the top four glob­al­ly and by attract­ing for­eign cap­i­tal, includ­ing into real estate, with prop­er­ty pur­chase and rental prices show­ing no signs of fiz­zling out.

Sim­ply put: A prop­er­ty gold rush is occur­ring, espe­cial­ly in Dubai, where real estate devel­op­ers tar­get wealthy expats with extras like bee­hives, lakes and plen­ty of green­ery as buy­ers hunt for close-to-nature prop­er­ties amidst the sand. And it is not just wealthy buy­ers. Estate Agent com­pa­nies from all over the world are set­ting up shop in the region, hop­ing to get a piece of the action.

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And the lat­est box to tick, the one which investors are increas­ing­ly ask­ing for? “Where is the clos­est ver­ti­port to be locat­ed?” This is seen as an addi­tion­al add-on for a shrewd prop­er­ty invest­ment. 

This augurs extreme­ly well for the eVTOL indus­try as com­mer­cial oper­a­tions begin, hope­ful­ly, next year. The infra­struc­ture cre­ation will be quick and far eas­i­er to devel­op in a region where author­i­ties are keen and deter­mined to thrust ahead with elec­tric air taxi oper­a­tions. 

There will be no Nim­bys or envi­ron­men­tal activists glu­ing them­selves to fly­ing taxi pro­pel­lors claim­ing that a ver­ti­port is unlaw­ful due to it being con­struct­ed on a sacred site for a rare Sau­di ant. Any non­sense like that will not be tol­er­at­ed by the author­i­ties.

So, the more ver­ti­ports that are con­struct­ed, the val­ues of prop­er­ty in their sur­round­ing areas could well rise fur­ther. 

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