RERAs Rental Index

[khindson]

Hi

I noticed on Gulf News today that RERA have now said that the rental calculator that has been on their website for a few weeks is the new rental index.

This shows annual rents for a 1 bed apartment on Dubai Marina as bringing between AED110,000 and AED150,000 per annum.

Are these now realistic based on what is going on in the market place?

 

[Bede]

RERA are a government agency who will, as such, always try to (a) talk up the market and (b) try to protect the developers as the biggest ones are government owned. Even if this were not the case any rental index based on historical data in a rapidly falling market is basically out of date before it is even published.
A year ago investors/speculators were quite happy to sit on an empty property knowing that they were still making big capital gains. Now the only way to make any money out of a property is to rent it. With lots of new developments being completed in 2009, and most of them are owned by investors and not end-users, the supply will go up substantially while the number of people willing or able to rent, because of the reducing expat population - and the uncertainty of those that remain - the demand has all but collapsed. Forget RERA and grab the first person intersted in renting - at any price!!!