Indians have emerged as the top foreign property investors in Dubai, investing more than Rs.30,000 crore ($4.59bn) last year alone, which is more than a quarter of the total of around Rs1 lakh crore ($15.3 billion) of ‘non-Arab’ property investments recorded in the year 2014, says Dubai Land Department.
During the first half of the year, Indians were the most prolific foreign investors with 3017 transactions worth more than Rs13,000 crore ($1.98 billion). The department says that more than 123 different nationalities spent more than Rs42,400 crore during the same period.
This week, the leading developers in Dubai will be going to Mumbai in india, to entice Indians to invest in the real estate sector of the emirate. The real estate exhibition in Mumbai is rightly timed, as the property market in Dubai is still shaky, with prices having fallen 12.2 percent during the past year, one of the largest drops in the world, as per Knight Frank report.
Russians were the biggest investors in Dubai property market, following 2008 global financial crunch. The biggest names in construction sector in Dubai are no trying to entice Indian buyers to invest in apartments and villas at prices that they claim are cheaper than Mumbai.
However, an official at Knight Frank said that in the past year, there has been a decline in proportion of Indian real estate investments in Dubai.
During first half of this year, Indians constituted 15 percent of total investment on property. This is in contrary to 25 percent in 2014. This is largely attributed to strength of US dollar, to which the UAE dirham is pegged, which makes real estate investment in the emirate a more expensive endeavour for the nationality.
The Dubai Land Department data shows foreigners account for 78 percent of total real estate investment during first half of the year 2015.
