Despite Dubai real estate market having to deal with a full lockdown, innovative tools like Live Viewings and Virtual Tours aided in the successful closing of a total of 1,824 transactions worth over Dh3.62 billion ($985.4 million) in April, according to UAE-based Property Finder on Wednesday. This brings the year-to-date total to 12,254 sales transactions worth Dh24.15 billion, it stated. Off-plan accounted for 72 percent of all transactions and was dominated by Villanova and Dubai Creek Harbour for villa/townhouses and apartments respectively. Top off-plan sales locations were The Lagoons in Dubai Creek Harbour (123 transactions), Jumeirah Village Circle (112), Villanova (110), Umm Suqeim (105) and Business Bay (97), said the Emirati portal citing figures from Data Finder, its real estate insights and data platform. According to the report, the volume of transactions for the secondary market were considerably lower than the off-plan market however Dubai Marina (40) and Palm Jumeirah (39) dominated as always followed by Mudon (31), Downtown Dubai (26) and Dubai Hills Estate (21). The top communities for apartment sales were: Jumeirah Village Circle (125); Dubai Creek Harbour (123); Umm Suqeim (105); Downtown Dubai (92), and Jumeirah Beach Residence (86). The top communities for villa/townhouses sales were: Villanova (118); Serena (36); Dubai South (26); Jumeirah (18) and Arabian Ranches (12). Property Finder's proprietary search demand data shows the trends of what consumers are looking for. For overall Dubai, the search demand has been dominated by Dubai Marina and Palm Jumeirah with both areas accounting for 21% of all searches in April. This is followed by Downtown Dubai with 7.2 percent of all searches, Dubai Hills Estate with 4.8 percent and Jumeirah Village Circle with 4.2 percent. The top keywords consumers used for the month of April are ‘payment plan', ‘upgraded', ‘seaview', ‘furnished' and ‘pool'. The trends show consumers are looking for more space and better payment terms, stated the UAE property portal. “Since the beginning of March and when the Covid-19 crisis started, the percentage of searches on the Property finder Portal for villas/townhouses is higher than for apartments. This trend continues to grow even after the lockdown has eased,” remarked Lynnette Abad, the director of Research and Data. “When compared to the previous weeks, sales enquiries submitted to agents for villas in Dubai were up 30 percent than the same week last year,” stated Abad. “Rental leads for villas in Dubai are also up for the second week in a row, up 56 per cent compared to the same week last year,” she added.
