Dubai property

EFG-Hermes Holding SAE predicted a 10 percent decline in the number of Britons buying Dubai property as the British housing slump erodes their buying power, Zawya Dow Jones reported, citing the bank's real-estate analyst Stefan Schurmann.
British buyers now account for 12 percent of foreign real-estate investors in the Gulf emirate, behind nationals from Saudi Arabia and India, said EFG-Hermes, the biggest publicly traded Arab investment bank, Zawya Dow Jones reported on its Web site Sunday.

Property prices in Dubai have soared since foreigners were given the right to own real estate in 2002 as demand exceeded supply on record population growth. Dubai's residential property prices rose 4.4 percent in April from March and 35 percent from a year earlier, Al Mal Capital PSC, a United Arab Emirates-based investment bank, said in a report on May 12.

Meanwhile, the Dubai government has evicted 600 families from multi-occupancy villas in al-Rashidiya neighborhood because of alleged health and fire hazards, The National reported, citing residents.

The Dubai government, which has recently banned more than one family from occupying the same villa, threatened to cut water and electricity to the villas if the families did not leave within three to 10 days of receiving notice, the newspaper reported, citing residents who are being evicted.

Landlords have refused to repay advance rents of up to one year owed to tenants, making it difficult for the residents to pay for new housing, the newspaper reported.