Poetic Justice as Dubai Falls 70%

tk — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 01:56:53 +0000

A metaphor for Dubai's property market

There’s not been much new to say for the past several weeks. I mean there’s only so many times you can say ‘crash’, ‘bubble’ and ‘recession’ before fatigue sets in, both for reader and writer. So apologies for not posting for a while.

Yes we’ve been getting informal stories and anecdotes from friends and colleagues about how Dubai remains in dire straits and how the doom and gloom is so palpable. Thousands of migrant workers have gone home. Now the cottage industries – the food stalls, the visa advisors, the cheap-end rag trade, the sim card sellers – that catered to these workers are feeling the pinch. The small time bosses who would hire from this pool of low paid workers now find it increasingly difficult to acquire their dogsbodies. All the local businesses are having to compete like never before, over a dwindling market place. It has literally become dog eat dog according to our pal Suleiman.

And what of the go-getting emirate’s finest creation, its real estate market?

Now last time we looked, there were reports of 30-50% falls which was bad enough, though in our humble opinion nowhere near enough to ‘correct’ the foolishness in the market. I mean the really foolish often need some good hard slaps to come round to their senses, and 30% was nowhere near strong enough.

So imagine our surprise (the kind of surprise when you finally get to read something refreshingly honest) when PropertyWire published an article on 31st March in which Mohammed Khan, Managing Director of New World Capital, a Dubai-based real estate brokerage, reported that “We have seen prices plummet across Dubai’s property sector by 50 to 70% to the level of 2005. We expect the plunge to continue for the next six to eight months to bring prices down to their original level five years ago.”

Now that is a good firm slap across the cheek of the property profiteers!

Further snippets from the article include:

“…..brokers said that the current outlook for the property market was starker than the latest study by investment bank EFG-Hermes, which said on Saturday 28th March 2009 that the Dubai market had entered a period of correction after a sustained period of buoyant activity. The bank forecast overall price declines of 50 to 60% from peak prices in 2008.”

“….A drop in residential as well as commercial rents is also evident, brokers said. The slide has been more pronounced in areas of New Dubai, where rents have fallen by up to 40%. A. Najeeb, Sales Manager of MS International Property, said apartment rents in the more established area of Al Ghusais were also declining fast.”

“….More drastic has been the decline in commercial property rents, almost 60% across Dubai. ‘We are expecting further rent drop by May or June when a lot of expatriate families will be going back,’ Najeeb added. ”

Slumdogs and Millionaires

BBC's hard hitting investigative journalism series

We have heard several times that somehow what is happening to Dubai is a kind of payback – “karma” if you will. In the words of Justin Timberlake, “what goes around, comes around” !

Commentators have said that dubai’s boom has been built on the back of slave labour. Where the rich few were making ever more millions, it was the poor construction workers that were suffering with poor pay, poor working conditions, lack of proper human rights and substandard living arrangements.

Well those of you who are able to watch the UK’s BBC1 channel will be able to make your own minds up on this issue.

On this coming Monday 6th April at 8.30pm, BBC1’s Panorama programme will be reporting on Dubai’s underdog migrant working class in a special programme called “Slumdogs and Millionaires”. This should make interesting viewing. You can get the background spiel here.

I will post a review of the programme next week.

Poetic licence

Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Anyone who has watched the recent comic book movie adaptation “Watchmen” will know that the arch villain of the plot is a super being called “Ozymandias”. After doing a little digging we found that this is a Greek title given to the Pharoah, Rameses the Great. It is also the title of a well-known poem by the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley who wrote a sonnet in 1818 called Ozymandias. It is an evocative poem of only 14 lines and interestingly, it has often been quoted in the past when a writer wishes to describe the downfall of a civilisation.

I present it here as an allegory of the situation in Dubai, and as a general reminder of how we are all transient beings and no matter what we achieve or how high we rise, one day we will fade into the fog of time.

OZYMANDIAS
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

We don’t pretend to be literary geniuses (far from it) but we don’t mind sharing our basic understanding of the piece with you, dear reader!

We note how the poet starts very vaguely. He didn’t experience this broken statue himself, but heard it from a traveller. Hence we the readers are getting the picture 3rd hand.

Then we start to find out a few details – the legs, the head. After that the poet starts to speculate on the sculptor, who is one step further removed from us again – so now we are getting 4th hand information, i.e. the sculptor experienced the king, the traveller saw the sculptors work, the poet heard it from the traveller, and we are hearing it from the poet – this emphasises how far away this event is from us, both in time and space. Through the sculptor’s hand, we get some clues to what Ozymandias was like. He was cold and ruthless no doubt (with a ’sneer of cold command’). He ruled over his subjects with a mocking superiority (‘the hand that mocked them’) yet at the same time he felt for their welfare (‘the heart that fed’) – perhaps as pets?

So now the poet has built an image of what this king was like. Then we are told the bleak and stark message that has been left for future generations by this once mighty Pharoah. “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair,” he warns us.

Finally after this brief lucid picture of a past epoch, we are returned to our obscurity as nothing now remains except the ‘lone and level sands’ that ’stretch far away’.

Just imagine – this was written almost 200 years ago about a king who lived over 3000 years ago. Yet its message and warning still feel relevant in today’s day and age and we wonder – who are the mighty pharoahs of our time, that build their colossal monuments rising out of the sands? Perhaps they should leave a blank tablet at the base of their creations upon which one day warnings could be left for future generations…..

www.dubaipropertycrash.com » bbc

Poetic Justice as Dubai Falls 70%