Cheaper rents for Dubai residents

Dubai's property watchdog on Wednesday said its new rental index, due out later this month, will include lower rental values to better represent the current slowdown in the market.

The Real Estate Regulatory Authority (Rera) renewed its pledge to publish an updated index in April following reports earlier this week suggesting the new index could be delayed until the summer, UAE daily The National reported.

In a statement Mohammed Khalifa bin Hammad, the director of Real Estate Relationship Regulation at Rera, said the index was being updated as a result of data collected through the online rental contract registration programme.
"The new update of the rental index will be released in April. What has been noted from the first rental index is an average price change of between 10-15 per cent," said bin Hammad.

Rera also confirmed it would update the list every few months to keep in touch with future market fluctuations.

It added that reports claiming Rera had delayed issuing the new figures because of a hold-up in gathering data were “entirely false” and based on information from “an unknown individual allegedly working for Rera,” The National reported.

The news comes barely 24 hours after a Rera official said an updated rental index would not necessarily be based on new rental values in the emirate after all.

Karim Awwad, an official at the authority, was quoted as saying "We are not making any changes to the existing figures; we are just going to be updating the areas that were not mentioned in the last index.

''We will be conducting a new survey in summer of this year."

The comments were published by AME Info on Tuesday.

The latest statement from Rera reconfirms its stance in February when it indicated that the index would be updated and re-released in April following concerns it was based on unrealistic rental values taken during the boom of summer 2008.

Rents have fallen from last year's peak and will likely drop 20 percent+ this year.