Residential

Residential Prices

Price performance in the GCC’s residential sector has almost uniformly been positive over the course of 2023, with only villas in Bahrain and apartments in Jeddah seeing prices decline marginally. Whilst the direction of price changes has converged towards a largely positive territory, we continue to see a significant polarisation in the rates of growth witnessed, something we expect to see continue.

Looking at Bahrain in 2023, apartment rates registered an increase. It is anticipated that with the continued addition of quality stock and attracting regional investment, there will be steady growth in rates for 2024. Villa sales rates, based on plot area, which are predominantly driven by local market demand, are likely to remain relatively stable.

In Saudi Arabia, we expect that price performance will continue to be fragmented over the course of the year, both across cities and typologies. More so, we forecast that average price growth in Riyadh will materially outperform other key cities and on the whole, we also expect transaction volumes to stabilise in 2024 after two consecutive years of declines.

The UAE continues to be the only market which has recorded both price and transaction volume growth in 2023. In Abu Dhabi, we expect that transaction volumes will continue to grow over the course of 2024, with new high-end and prime stock expected to underpin stronger rates of price growth on average. Existing and dated stock, on the other hand, is likely to materially underperform the market. In Dubai, we expect transaction volumes to decrease, but only marginally. Price growth in the apartment and villas segments of the market will continue, however, we expect this rate to moderate somewhat over the course of the year.