Ahmet Kayhan, CEO of Reidin.com, wraps up the year in Dubai property. Kayhan believes we have seen the bottom of the market give one or two percent

Reidin : DubaiEye103.8

Asset allocation for illiquid markets

SSRN-Comatose Markets: What If Liquidity is Not the Norm? by Aswath Damodaran

An excellent paper by Aswath Damodaran (New York University - Stern School of Business), December, 2010. He discusses the importance of accounting for "market liquidity" in valuating different asset classes including real estate and other real assets.

Real Estate Data Providers in the MENA Region

The current sources of real estate data are very limited and only available at a relatively high price with private organisations (except for Mazaya real estate index). The main sources can be summarised as follows:

a. Cityscape Intelligence website:
The website covers MENA countries except for Algeria and Turkey. It provides a comprehensive database on past and current construction projects with great level of details. It also provides 'country profiles' covering many aspects such as rules and regulations, anticipated supply and demand (by real estate sector), and general overview of the market. Further, the website details the companies working within the construction industry and provides up to date research and consultancy reports provided by the key players in the industry (e.g. JLL, Colliers and DTZ and many others). Most recently, the website launched an exclusive pricing data on residential properties in major MENA cities.

b. REIDIN.com

REIDIN.com is considered to be the most informative database on emerging real estate markets, including the MENA markets. The website provides many products and services that are of benefit to domestic as well as global investors. The main tool is called REBIS.com and is concerned with providing data including:

 Price Indices

 Market Price Data

 Macro Economic Indicators

 Projects Database

 Building Database

 Company Database

 Deals, Valuations, Listings

The website also provides a product called RETAILFocus which is a retail real estate/ shopping centres database that provides in-depth data on retail property markets across emerging countries. The database includes shopping centre and retailer Profiles, GLA, footfall, price data, news, research, upcoming retail projects, owner, developer, property manager profiles powered by analysis and comparison tools and search engine.

Another product is DUBAIFocus which is considered the first exclusive online information product tracking real estate deals and transactions in Dubai, with a comprehensive database going back to 1973. The DUBAIFocus also provides daily information on all types of land, villa and flat deals (sales, mortgage, lease, grant, inheritance, etc.) in Dubai.

The website also comprises indices for residential real estate mainly focusing on UAE (Dubai) and Turkey (7 cities, namely Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Kocaeli, Bursa, Adana and Antalya).

c. Mazaya Real Estate index:

Mazaya Real Estate (a Kuwaiti listed company) has introduced in early 2007 the Mazaya Real Estate Index - the first of its kind in the Middle East. The index measures the prices of properties across the GCC, as opposed to other indices which only measure the share prices of property firms listed on the regions‘ stock exchanges. Since late 2009, the index is temporarily suspended to incorporate market realities and to be activated in the near future (Zawya, 2009).