TIMESONLINE: Local banks are in trouble and property prices have crashed. Is the bubble about to burst?
Lorna Davidson and her husband Mike gave up Leicester for Dubai this summer looking for a better life. They didn’t find it. The marketing jobs they thought they had in a property firm were withdrawn the day after they arrived and they cannot find alternatives. Nor can they get a mortgage to buy a flat.
“We were told we had jobs at 25,000 dirhams (£5,000) a month and that we could get a property with a 10% deposit,” said Lorna, 24. “There are no jobs and the banks won’t lend without 40% upfront.”
It’s of little comfort to the Davidsons that they are not alone. After a few months when oil-rich Middle Eastern states seemed immune to the effects of the banking crisis and the global economic slow-down, the credit crunch has crashed on to the biscuity shores of the Gulf with the force of an economic tsunami.
With struggling local banks being bailed out, liquidity drying up, the property market transformed from a bazaar of eager buyers into a den of sellers, and the government creating a crisis committee to tackle the slump, observers are asking: is the Dubai bubble bursting?
“Confidence has collapsed,” said Mustafa Alani of the Dubai-based think tank, the Gulf Research Center. Chris Dommett of John Charcol Dubai, a mortgage advisory firm, added: “People have really begun to fear a crash.” >>> John Arlidge | November 30, 2008
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