Real Estate Large deals drive Qatar and Kuwait real estate in Q2 By Valentina Pasquali July 24, 2024, 11:28 AM Unsplash/Florian Wehde Doha's skyline: Deals in the Qatari capital dominated the country's Q2 transactions 376 Qatar deals worth over $4bn $2.8bn of real estate sales in Kuwait Interest rates remain concerning Large one-off transactions masked an otherwise sluggish performance in the Qatari and Kuwaiti real estate markets in the second quarter of this year. The number of mortgage transactions in Qatar from April to June increased by more than 42 percent over the same period last year. Some 376 deals were signed for a total value of QR15.479 billion (US$4.24 billion). Of these 133, or 35 percent, originated in Doha, according to Ministry of Justice data. NewsletterGet the Best of AGBI delivered straight to your inbox every week Doha was also home to seven of the 10 largest mortgage transactions of the quarter, with its largest city Al Rayyan comprising the other three. These 10 major transactions accounted for nearly 60 percent of the total deal value for the quarter. This is not a new trend, according to Anum Hasan, ValuStrat’s manager for advisory and research in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The top 10 properties that were traded in Qatar in Q2 2023 accounted for nearly 70 percent of all mortgage transactions in those three months, she said. “The trend of a few transactions comprising at least 50 percent of the total value of transactions has been prevalent in the past few years,” Hasan said. “This suggests that a few players drive significant activity in Qatar’s real estate market.” While the weighty transactions typically help drive the market when it is otherwise declining or stable, figures for the second quarter of this year suggest that there is underlying growth regardless of them, Hasan said. “The sentiments in the market have improved and the rising transaction volume and value are an indicator of that.” A similar dynamic was observed in Kuwait, where the value of total real estate sales, beyond just mortgages, reached a two-year high in the second quarter. This was due to sizeable individual deals across the commercial, investment and residential spaces. Logistics deals keep Kuwaiti real estate ticking over Lusail is first choice for wealthy Qatari buyers Kuwait signs $140m contracts for Al Metlaa development “The level of overall sales rose 22 percent [quarter on quarter] in Q2 to KD853 million ($2.8 billion),” the National Bank of Kuwait said in a report out this week. “Without the outlying sales. Sales have been broadly flat versus Q1.” Removing an individual KD32 million ($105 million) land sale in the city of Al-Fnaitees in the Mubarak Al-Kabeer governorate, residential activity in Kuwait dropped nearly 14 percent from the previous quarter. “The prevailing low sentiment and demand weakness factors include high costs of financing, the potential for global interest rates to remain higher for longer and still-elevated valuations within this segment,” the National Bank of Kuwait said. Similarly, a large building sale in Al-Salmiya for KD22 million (US$72 million) allowed the real estate investment segment to keep its quarterly decline to only -3.7 percent.
