DUBAI: Dubai real estate buyers are increasingly moving away from off-plan properties in favor of completed or second-hand homes, according to figures from online platform Property Finder.
January started the 2021 Dubai real estate market off a positive footing, with Property Finder reporting 3,300 transactions worth AED 6.74 billion ($1.84 billion), a 15.5 percent increase in terms of volume and 37 percent increase in value, compared with January 2020.
One of the interesting trends highlighted was the fact that 72 percent of all transactions in January 2021 were for secondary or ready properties, with the reminding 28 percent being for off-plan properties.
The secondary market registered 2,373 transactions in January, the highest number in a single month since March 2014, the data showed.
In 2017, off-plan property sales made up 61 percent of transactions.
“When the pandemic started, we saw many trends shift, and one of them was to secondary/ready homes,” Lynnette Abad, director of research and data at Property Finder, told Arab News.
“People wanted to move to a ready property immediately and not wait for construction of an off-plan property to be completed,” she said.
“Consumers were moving to larger homes, shifting from apartments to villa/townhouses in search for more outside space and they wanted it immediately, due to the fact that their home all of the sudden became their office, their children’s school and their place of leisure.”
Abad said the lack of new project launches in 2020 also led to the decline in off-plan sales.
“Prices in the secondary/ready market were attractive and rivalling off-plan stock. Buyers have always been apprehensive about off-plan units, and that is not something new,” she said.
Property Finder found that 11.5 percent of sales in January were for villas or townhouses in Naad Al-Sheeba, followed by Dubailand (11.4 percent), Meydan (7.5 percent), Dubai Hills Estate (6 percent) and Tilal Al-Ghaf (4.8 percent).
For apartments, 12.4 percent of sales last month took place in Business Bay followed by Dubai Marina (9.7 percent), Jumeirah Village Circle (9.3 percent), Downtown Dubai (5.6 percent) and Palm Jumeirah (5.4 percent).
