Dubai: The residential property sales price index in Dubai fell in April 2015 compared to a year earlier, as asking prices for apartments and villas registered a negative growth.
Reidin, a property information company, said in its report on Monday that apartment sales prices dropped 3.6 per cent last month from the same period last year, while villa sales prices posted a 0.4 per cent year-on-year decline.
Between March and April, apartment prices dropped 0.87 per cent, while villa sales rates dipped 1.84 per cent.
Consequently, the price index for all residential units fell by three points, from 281.4 to 278.7, representing a drop of 1.07 per cent in April 2015.
Rents, on the other hand, increased 2.9 per cent last month compared to the same period last year. Month-on-month figures, however, posted a 0.69 per cent decline.
Property prices in Dubai have been softening along with the decline in oil and gold prices. Deloitte had earlier predicted that sales prices in Dubai would soften by a further 1 per cent to 5 per cent and stabilize thereafter.
Dubai’s residential market had a strong showing in the early part of last year, but the volume of residential transactions, as well as the sales price growth, remained flat towards the end of the year.
Some analysts, however, maintained that Dubai’s property sector is not slowing down, citing that prime property prices in the emirate fare much better than its Asian peers like Singapore, where prices registered a significant decline of 7.3 per cent from September 2014 to March 2015.
“The drop in prices in Dubai can mainly be attributed to the cooling measures put in place by the Dubai Government last year to contain any inflationary and speculative price hikes and steer the market towards stability,” said Bayut.com in its report.
