Ever since the recent Middle Eastern conflict broke out, I’ve been fascinated by real estate in the region and how it would react. Markets usually answer questions like that slowly and vaguely; Dubai answers them in public, because every transaction in the city lands in an open registry. So I’ve been building models on that data and following it closely, and publishing the work on a separate publication, Paimio Research, to keep the thematic dispersion down.
If the region interests you at all, I’d recommend two writeups from there.
The first is a deep dive on Emaar Properties, the listed developer behind the Burj Khalifa and Dubai Mall, a company with margins that resemble Nvidia’s, earned on buildings, trading at six times earnings. The report goes through how that’s even possible, customers funding the construction, the state feeding the land, and what the machine is actually worth at this point of the cycle:
https://www.paimioresearch.com/emaar-the-desert-machine/
The second looks at what the Dubai market is doing right now, transaction by transaction: volumes in the premium brackets have fallen by roughly two thirds since the war began and haven’t recovered with the ceasefire, while the cheapest segment is running at records. A market splitting in two, visible in the registry before it shows up anywhere else:
https://www.paimioresearch.com/dubai-real-estate-is-splitting-in-two/
Both are free to read, and if you want the ongoing work, the monthly registry updates and further company reports, you can subscribe at paimioresearch.com.
Emil