Dubai ready for drop in home prices

Dubai

FACED with predictions that Dubai home prices may drop as much as 20 per cent this year, analysts say the emirate's real estate developers and lenders are better prepared than when a crash in 2008 brought the city to the brink of bankruptcy.

Standard & Poor's this week estimated that values may fall by as much as a fifth this year, while brokers CBRE Group and JLL see a 10 per cent decline.

Still, builders and banks face less risk than they did six years a…