Sales surge but rents fall in Qatar property market

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• Residential sale deals rise 35%
• Apartment rents down 6% y-o-y
• Warehouse rents also down

Lively mortgage activity helped sales surge in Qatar’s property market in the second quarter of this year, according to research by real estate research company ValuStrat.

However, rents fell across the residential, commercial and industrial sectors.

Some 1,300 apartments and 120 villas were built from April to June. An estimated 9,000 units are expected this year overall and 6,500 are in the pipeline for next year, Dubai-based ValuStrat said. 

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Residential sale deals rose 35 percent over the previous quarter and 15 percent year on year, a jump that ValuStrat said could be “partly attributed to the recent enhancements in mortgage regulations” in Qatar from the second quarter of last year.

“The loan-to-value ratios and tenure limits were made more favourable for Qataris and expatriates,” Anum Hassan, ValuStrat’s head of research for Qatar, told AGBI in June after a near doubling in mortgage transactions in the first quarter of 2024 .

Al Rayyan accounted for about a third of all residential sales, with Doha contributing more than a quarter.

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The Pearl Island and Al Qassar districts experienced a 33 percent fall in total transaction value and a 28 percent drop in volume compared to the previous quarter. 

The median asking rent for an apartment was down nearly 2 percent from the previous three months and 6 percent year on-year.

Villa rents were practically unchanged from the beginning of the year, but 1 percent lower than in the same quarter in 2023, ValuStrat said. 

Some 10,540 apartment leases were signed from April to June, a nearly 20 percent fall compared to the same quarter in 2023. Villa lease contracts, at 4,075 in total, were 10.5 percent down on Q2 last year, ValuStrat said, quoting figures on the Qatar property market from the Ministry of Municipality and Environment. 

Office rents unchanged

Rents for office space were essentially unchanged from the previous quarter, but down 3.6 percent over the year, while those for shopping centres dropped 2 percent quarter on quarter and 5 percent year on year.

Elsewhere in the Qatar property market, warehouse rents also fell from the previous year, with varying quarter-on-quarter performances depending on their type, such as dry and temperature-controlled, ValuStrat said. 

A year-on-year increase of more than a quarter in the number of tourists visiting Qatar sustained growth in the hospitality sector, with a 38 percent jump in revenue per available room compared to the same quarter in 2023.

Qatar is boosting its tourism offering with developments such as the $5.5 billion entertainment-focused Simaisma project.

“The rise in tourism and entertainment projects may point towards a period of cautious optimism,” Hassan said.