DUBAI: Soaring prices in Dubai’s property market were likely to slow rather than crash as the sector consolidates, the chief executive of asset management company Daman Investments said yesterday. “Prices are bound to stop growing at this maddening scale,” Shehab Gargash, whose firm manages around 5 billion dirhams ($1.4 billion), told Reuters after a news conference. “The question is how will it stop? Will it be a crash? I don’t think so. I doubt we will see a significant long-term bust. But we will see corrections.”

Residential property prices in Dubai, the trade hub of the United Arab Emirates and home to the world’s tallest building, were expected to grow 35 percent this year before slowing, a Reuters poll showed. Prices would continue to rise as long as rents and demand keep growing, Gargash said. But in areas other than valuation the property market was already consolidating, he said. “We’ve begun to see consolidation that is not necessarily price-related as the market broadens and deepens,” he said.

“Dubai is no longer a straightforward build-and-sell apartments proposition,” he added. “It’s more like, ‘what do you do with the mass of real estate out there in the next ten years or so’.”

Daman saw potential growth in investment in property management, insurance and the structuring and creation of property derivatives, but not in property development, Gargash said. Qatar was a similar market to Dubai and was also moving beyond the development phase, he said.

Daman saw good growth prospects in the region in aviation, banking and financial services, he added. It was also looking at growing investments in commodities such as oil and gold, Gargash said.

Daman Securities, a unit of Daman Investments, has a small investment on the Dubai Mercantile Exchange (DME) as a member of the trade floor. The DME launched a Middle East sour crude contract last year.

Sales by foreign investors on regional stock markets, as they book profits and take their money elsewhere, would not derail regional economies and growth, Gargash said. “We shouldn’t be too surprised to see this kind of move,” he said. “We have an economy that is far more resilient than can be affected by the actions of the foreign hedge funds and similar investors. Despite their importance in size, I don’t think they have a commanding impact on what happens today.”