Observations From My Recent Trip To The Middle East

by Paul Odett on 06/29/10 at 12:01 pm

After returning from the Middle East a couple weeks ago, and again just a couple months before that, I had some time to reflect on my visit to Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Saudi Arabia and have some quick observations as it relates to the real estate market.

One, the market in the Middle East like ours here in the US has slowed quite a bit, but a few areas of activity do still exist.  The Doha area in Qatar is very active with new projects, with the flagship project called “The Pearl” already delivering residential units and building up their Marinas for slip delivery soon.

Two, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has a number of large scale projects moving through the planning stage and due to start marketing very soon, in particular are the 4 major economic cities called King Abdullah Economic City, Knowledge Economic City, Jazan Economic City and Prince Abdul Aziz bin Mousaed Economic City       .

Three, the Abu Dhabi has a few active areas of development, one of them being Saadiyat Island and seemingly on a track to be a huge success with a number of active large scale residential and commercial developments in the planning and construction phase.

With the global economic recovery in mid stride, I look forward to following the progress on a global stage and will eagerly await the completion of many real estate projects still on the books for completion in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region.  It will be interesting when I visit again in a few months to see how the recovery has affected new real estate development and construction and in particular the capital markets in the Middle East.