Do you think that Rera's new regulations will help Dubai's ailing property industry?

Do you think that Rera’s new regulations will help Dubai’s ailing property industry?

The results are in.

February 15, 2009 2:44 by Dana El Baltaji

With the future of Dubai’s property sector in question, Kipp wanted to know if readers felt that the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (Rera) will save developers and investors from financial ruin. According to our poll results, the majority of Kipp’s readers (42 percent) are unsure if Rera’s regulations will help the property industry because developers are not forced to abide by the authority’s laws.

Another 39 percent of readers feel that Rera’s regulations protect developers rather than investors, and will therefore not help Dubai’s struggling property sector. Interestingly, only 3 percent of respondents feel that Rera’s laws favor investors, and 5 percent think that the authority will ‘rescue us all’.

11 percent of readers asked: Who’s Rera?

The poll results echo the fear and lack of confidence many investors have in Dubai’s property sector, much of which have been well documented in the local and international press.

Unfortunately for Rera, it appears its attempts to sooth investors’ fears with statements have done little to calm the panic. Last week, Marwan bin Ghalita, CEO of Rera insisted that “Loss of investor’s rights is a red line [...] it has not happened and it will never happen in Dubai real estate market,” but the fears remain.

Tags: Dubai, Kipp's Poll, property, Real Estate Regulatory Authority (Rera), UAE

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4 Comments

American Academy of Financial Management on February 16, 2009 8:29 am

RERA’s decision, particularly in respect to rental prices, will only serve to prolong the agony in respect to the property bubble. When demand in the economy recedes rapidly as it has done, price corrections are a way of achieving equilibrium. The old adage of the bigger they are, the harder they fall applys – with landlords seeking to up rents, the supply/demand imbalance is elongated and the eventual correction will be harder.

This is not a way to provide a soft landing. The better choice would have been to try to flatten prices by capping rents at 2008 prices. The only saving grace is that with low occupancy in locations like JBR and prices crashing through the floor, that the high rents may incentivize some to enter the apartment market as secondary buyers. The question is whether or not financing will become available from the banks…
mohamad on February 16, 2009 8:31 am

It is happening every day. Investors are considered in default and deposits paid by them confiscated when the developer did not even bother to clear the dirt from the project site. Hence deposits are being confiscated for projects that only exists on paper and are going to be cancelled after the bounty of deposits is collected. Investor rights and money is a green line for developers to grab and take.
JAY on February 16, 2009 11:04 am

no laws = no investors = no recovery

RERA protect investors and do it quick!
Kahn on February 17, 2009 9:28 am

Where are now the big words like BUILD & INVESTORS WILL COME.
DUBAI DON’T NEED INVESTORS……. INVESTORS NEED DUBAI.

So far not a word from the Govt to protect the money of investors in dying industry of property development.