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Dubai's rail network is not even two months old, but Shane McGinley finds it is already influencing the city's property market
"The commercial and social imp-acts are simply immense," he said.
The metro clocked up 1.7 million passengers during its first month of operations, which shows that, despite some pre-launch skepticism, it has proved popular with Dubai residents.
The station at the Mall of the Emi-rates has proven to be the most popular and it was reported last month that the metro had led to a rise in shoppers at both it and at the Deira City Centre.
The metro is also changing residents living location preferences, according to a survey by master developer Limitless which found that 40 per cent of those surveyed would favor a location within walking distance of a metro station over a good view.
As a result, Ian Albert, regional director of Colliers International, told 7DAYS yesterday that in the short term this may lead to a rise in residential rents in areas close to the stations currently open. This is despite the fact that aver-age rates in Dubai have fallen by nearly half in the last year.
Andrew Edwards, a director at property advisors DTZ, recently released a report on the connection between the metro and prop-erty and said that residential and commercial properties located less than 400 meters from the metro could see sale prices rise by up to 20 per cent.
"One area that looks likely to benefit is Jumeirah Lake Towers," Vincent Easton, sales director with Dubai-based agents Engel and Volkers, told 7DAYS.
"There you have a mixed residen-tial and commercial environment, a host of retail and leisure outlets being planned and elegant hotels such as the Bonnington Jumeirah Lake Towers already in operation.
When you add the metro to this mix you can see value being realized," he added.
Green said that for the metro to be an overall success the authorities had to try to encourage residents to leave their cars at home, similar to what has been done in Europe. However, he added that the hot summer months in Dubai will become the acid test for residents.
At present these are all simply theories as the metro is still not fully complete and the economic downturn still hangs like a shadow over the market.
"It will take time for the metro to be widely used and the access-ability benefits to be understood," Edwards concluded in his report. " In some cases, it has taken three to five years for price uplifts to filter through".
Source: www.7days.ae/business Nov. 4, 2009
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