Multibillion dirham projects unveiled on day one at Cityscape

Property developers in Dubai have unveiled projects worth billions of dirhams on the opening day of Cityscape Global despite a slowdown in the city's real estate market.

Visitors look at scaled versions of Emaar's Downtown Dubai projects at the opening day of Cityscape Global. Satish Kumar / The National
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Property developers in Dubai have unveiled projects worth billions of dirhams on the opening day of Cityscape Global despite a slowdown in the city's real estate sector.
Visitors picked their way between lavish stands displaying videos of computer-generated images, architects' models of futuristic cityscapes and human models dressed to impress - seemingly ignoring new statistics from property brokers showing that both rents and house prices in Dubai are showing signs of softening.
Top of the bill was the Dubai Holding's announcement that it would start construction work on the first phase of what will be the world's biggest shopping mall by next March.
At a press conference yesterday, the government-owned conglomerate said that it was in the process of appointing consultants to work on the 48 million square feet project and hoped to start construction in the first quarter of 2015.
Dubai Holding said that it expects around half of the Dh25 billion cost of building the project to be met by the company's own resources, while it is hoping to raise Dh12.5bn from external sources.
Khalfan Belhoul, vice president for strategy at Dubai Holding told reporters that the group was considering "all options" - land sales, joint ventures or bank facilities - to meet the cost of building the megaproject.
The megamall will take 10 years to build with only a first phase likely to be completed in time for the 2020 Expo, the company said.
It declined to say what would be included in the first phase of the project and whether this would include a planned theme park.
At the same time the Dubai-listed property company Deyaar unveiled ambitious plans to build 27 new buildings close to the Expo site.
Deyaar said that the 5.5 million sq ft development of about 2,000 apartments and serviced apartments would be aimed at mid-income families and would sell for prices up to Dh1,000 per sq ft.
The project, built on a piece of land bought by Deyaar in 2007 and originally launched as Enclave at Cityscape 2008, has been redesigned to be aimed at people working in the nearby Al Maktoum airport in the Jebel Ali area, the Deyaar chief executive Saeed Al Qatami told The National yesterday.
He said that the company was in the process of getting government approvals for the scheme and it hoped to start work on an initial phase of six to eight buildings towards the end of the year.
Meanwhile the government- owned developer Nakheel was busy announcing that it would be restarting work on 1,400 luxury apartments and villas at its Jumeirah Heights Fronds at the north end of Jumeirah Islands.
And the Dubai-based building supplies group Danube Group announced its second foray into the development market with plans for a block of 300 apartments to be known as Glitz.
The announcements came against a background of data showing softening prices and rents in the emirate after two years of galloping growth.
On Saturday the property broker CBRE reported that Dubai rents have started to fall for the first time in three years. After 10 consecutive quarters of growth, average residential rentals dipped by 1 per cent this quarter as new stock came online at a time when demand dipped over the summer.
The biggest falls were in freehold areas such as Downtown Dubai and International Media Production Zone, where rents dropped by an average of 3 per cent while in Palm Jumeirah, Business Bay, International City and Motor City, average rents fell by 2 per cent.
Earlier this month Colliers International's house price index found that villa prices in Dubai fell fractionally to Dh15,866 per sq metre in the second quarter from an average of Dh15,931 per sq metre in the first quarter as buyers struggled to afford the most expensive houses on the market.
"The attendance at Cityscape is pretty good, we are not back to the height of the previous cycle," said Nick McLean, the head of CBRE's Dubai office. "It's better than last year and better than in Abu Dhabi earlier this year. People are now very interested in what is happening in the marketplace and that is new. There are intelligent questions being asked about sustainability in the market and where prices are going - that's new. People want to know if it's real and if they should put their money here. I haven't seen those questions asked for four or five years."
lbarnard@thenational.ae
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