Stating the obvious

Stating the obvious

It seems we are at last accepting that real estate projects no one wants are probably not worth building. We guess this is a good thing.

March 17, 2011 1:06 by Samuel Potter

Kipp is once again thanking its lucky stars for the existence of experts. We always love it when an expert breaks his silence, especially when they do so to say something mind numbingly obvious to even the simplest chicken on the battery farm. Not so long ago – (actually, it was five months ago almost. That’s pretty crazy). Anyway, five months ago we reported that ‘experts’ had made an astounding discovery: expatriates would prefer not to pay tax.

Well now we’re back on the expert case, this time doffing our hat at David Le Bail, Director at DTZ. No doubt Le Bail knows plenty about real estate, given that DTZ is a pretty massive real estate adviser. He probably knows much more than us. But Kipp is fairly sure the average man on the street could tell you building a project that no one wants is a bad thing, and should probably be avoided.

“If there is no demand for [a] project… just stop it. Spend the money where it is more useful. There are a large number of small and medium enterprises who don’t want Grade A office space and that is the reality… there is a serious need to rethink which projects must go on,” said Le Bail during a panel discussion at the third Arab Real Estate and Urban Development Conference.

Man alive. Are we only just realizing this now? Ah well, thinking about it, it probably does need saying; there is no shortage of ambitious developers in this part of the world with dollar signs where their eyeballs should be – it could well be that they need to be cautioned against projects that don’t make sense.

Pages: 1 2

Tags: dubai building demand, dubai cancelled projects, dubai projects, dubai property demand, dubai real estate, dubai real estate projects, dubai scrapped projects, dubai stalled projects, Real estate