'Lack of trust still prevalent for off-plan purchases'

Even five years after the financial crisis, buyers in Dubai are wary of off-plan property purchases, according to Construction Week Online.

A biennial survey recently published by Dubai-based law firm Hadef & Partners called The Legal State of The Dubai Property Market found that 84% of respondents (of which there were more than 1,000) said they favoured investing in completed schemes over off-plan sales, with only 15% expressing a preference for off-plan.

For those that were happy to invest off-plan, around 87% restricted their choice to a master developer, such as Emaar, Nakheel or Dubai Properties.

Brent Baldwin, a partner at the firm, said that this was the third of these studies the firm had completed looking at the legal framework for Dubai’s property market.

“In the first and second surveys we did, which were still quite close to the global financial crisis and the crash in the market here, the responses were very negative in the sense of people feeling like they had been shafted, effectively... that the laws hadn’t protected them and developers were getting away with things that were either illegal or unethical.

“The results this year, although they’re positive in some areas, there’s definitely still that lingering lack of trust with off-plan property and people are obviously much more cautious.”