”I saw fear take over,” said Timur Usmanov, a real estate agent for Dubai-based Monshaat Properties, about investors who recently tried to flee the market just two or three years after diving in. “There are too many sellers and not enough buyers. …
“People are saying it’s like a tsunami that will attack the country in a few months,” said one broker, who sells property for a major Dubai developer and spoke only on condition her name not be used because she did not want to hurt her business.
Morgan Stanley angered some developers in August with a prediction that Dubai property prices would likely fall by 10 percent after years of unrelenting growth, starting in 2009.
Richard Rodriguez, the former CEO of the Dubai division of Emaar Properties, the builder of the world’s tallest building and one of Dubai’s biggest developers, said too many builders in the emirate have focused on return-seeking investors — rather than people looking for homes to live in.
