Emaar's Founder Expects Dubai Property to Give Back Five to Ten Per Cent, and Says It Could Turn Just as Fast

Others did. The National reported that some developers have been offering discounts of up to fifty per cent, which Emaar has not matched, and that Alabbar expects what he called a nice balance in 2027 as the supply that was launched in the boom years of 2023 and 2024 is delivered into a market that has cooled. The adjustment he is describing is that supply meeting a demand that has been interrupted, and his five to ten per cent is a founder's estimate of how far the average has to move before the two meet again.

How to read it

Three things. First, the figure is for the market, not for Emaar, and the company's cancellations suggest its own buyers are behaving differently from the average. Second, it is a forecast about the next year or so, made by the person with the most to lose from being wrong in either direction; too optimistic and his buyers wait, too pessimistic and his shares fall. Third, it comes with a condition attached, which is the war. Every number in Dubai property this year has the same condition, and the market's history says that when the condition lifts, the recovery is fast and disorderly. Alabbar said as much in the sentence everyone quoted less.

For buyers the practical reading is that the discounting is real, uneven and concentrated among developers who need cash; that Emaar's prices are a floor rather than a bargain; and that anyone buying off-plan now is buying at a moment when the strongest developer in the market expects the average to fall further before it turns. The rental market is a separate question and a firmer one. The pressures on it, and on the wider economy, from the war are covered in our review of the war economy at six months, and the interest rate risk that hangs over every mortgage in the Gulf is in today's markets piece.

And the train

One date in the same week points the other way. Etihad Rail's Dubai station at Al Yalayis, beside Jumeirah Golf Estates on Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Road, opens to passengers on 30 September, according to Gulf News. The journey to Abu Dhabi's Mohamed bin Zayed City station is expected to take about 57 minutes, and the station connects by footbridge to the Jumeirah Golf Estates Metro stop four minutes' walk away. Dubai fares are to be confirmed at opening; the Abu Dhabi to Fujairah service that launched in June charges from 55 dirhams in Comfort class and 120 in Premium under a launch discount that halves the standard fare. A fifty-seven-minute train between the two cities changes where people can live in relation to where they work, which in the long run matters more to property values in the south and west of Dubai than any single quarter's adjustment. Our earlier report on the network is in the piece on Etihad Rail's connected future.