The Dubai sales house index increased by 12.1 percent in May 2020 compared to the base year 2012, and recorded a growth of 0.5 percent compared to April 2020.
The Dubai Land Department recorded a total of 1,440 sales transactions worth AED 2.47 billion with 66.5% in the off-plan segment and 33.5% in the secondary segment. This brings the year-to-date total to 13,590 sales transactions worth AED 27.8 billion.
Once we saw the lock-down ease in Dubai, real estate transactions immediately picked up. In May, we saw pent up demand similar to what we see after Ramadan, summer and winter holidays as sales and rental enquiries were significantly above the same week last year across all unit types.
Currently, the Dubai real estate market is going through a V shaped recovery and when analyzing the various indexes for May 2020, we are seeing the same V shaped pattern in recovery.
The index that held strength throughout the Covid-19 situation was the Dubai Villas/Townhouses Index. The reason was very clear in consumer demand at the start of the pandemic, people instantly saw the value in outside, personal space and villa/townhouse demand rose significantly week on week. This trend is still moving upward today.
The index prices are higher in April and May compared to March mainly due to supply. Sellers are waiting for this period to pass and prices during the lock-down basically stabilized to the same levels before the lock-down. Summer will be a very telling time as most will not travel for holidays and there are many active buyers in the market due to the relaxed mortgage cap and the best mortgage products and interest rates we have seen in 15 years.
