Mortgage enquiries show upward trend

Dubai / Emirates Business

While the property market appears to be simultaneously booming and crashing, depending on which statistic you follow, or which article you read, one source reports a remarkable increase in the property market arena. compareit4me.com, the region’s leading finance comparison site, has confirmed that mortgage enquiries have rocketed from January 2015 to April 2016.
According to their most recent figures, while public interest in home finance products has been unpre- dictable since the site’s launch in April 2014, from January 2016 onwards, enquiries into mortgages have been steadily rising across all income brackets, with exceptional growth seen in March and April. Interestingly, the specific salary brackets that have shown the most growth are those earning between AED8,000 and AED19,999. When compared against the average number of enquiries of the previous 22 months, enquiries from people earning between AED8,000 and AED11,999 tripled in March and April.
compareit4me.com CEO Jon Richards says, “Confidence in the property market has been turbulent since Q4 of last year. The UAE’s new mortgage cap rules, announced in October 2015, teamed with the cascading effects of the drop in crude oil prices certainly had an impact on the general public’s attitude to real estate here in the UAE. Added to this, the strong US dollar – and therefore dirham – and the subsequent retraction of attention from foreign investors all culminated together to create falling housing prices, resulting in hesitancy in the market.”
Jessica Horie, Senior Director at Prestige Real Estate says, “There are more buyers in the market now than the beginning of the year, and I would say this is due to the general consensus that we are at the lowest level of pricing and that the market will soon recover and prices of property will start to increase again. I’m certainly seeing a positive shift in activity – which ultimately means we should see an increase in prices follow. Additionally, new developments targeting end user buyers and lower salary brackets is definitely drawing more buyers into the market now. I foresee a trend towards more affordable housing projects and for people with salaries AED10k and below to start to being interested in owning they’re own homes rather than paying rent.”