Historic Event of FIFA & Rental Market

Since Qatar is hosting FIFA, it’ll surely increase the rental real estate activities. The country is expecting around 1.5 million visitors and the Government is seriously looking forward to getting the landlords on board to rent their properties to the massive visitors under the trend of short-term rentals in Qatar. The Qatar Government is offering “Permanent Residency” to all the buyers who purchase over One million dollars worth of property in 20-25 approved areas of Qatar.
According to Valustat, a high-ranking regional consulting firm Qatar reported a substantial rise in transaction amounts and values as compared to a previous couple of years especially the ones with COVID-19.
However, the effects of COVID-19 cannot be overlooked; just like all other areas of life it adversely affected the rental real estate market also.
Market activity visibly escalated; after the country overcame the effects of Covid, warehouses rents saw an increase, hotel, and villas performance was also good. From all these factors we found grounds for buyers increasing confidence; however various factors are contributing to building this atmosphere. Here they are:

• Qatar’s improved regional ties
• Improved competitiveness of properties
• Successful measures for hosting FIFA 2022
• Government introduced new policies for investor’s facilitation

In 2021, Qatar residential real estate market is expected to have a massive recovery with more units in completion. It is planned to add 8,200 units in the market where Lusail would be the center of activity...as more supply will be toward Lusail, the Pearl Qatar, and the West Bay. In the last quarter of 2020, the residential stock was laying at 303,015 units with the penetration of 530 more units in the last term of 2020.  Also in Dec 2020, the number of residential deals and g Ed was on an increase around 120 percent as compared to the previous month

The Rental Market Worth

Qatar’s rental real estate market holds a momentous worth, 59% of housing units are already occupied & rented. The tenant used to spend 1/3rd of its income to pay off the rent every year. The apartments are doing good rental yields and landlords are quite happy with these stats.
For rental villas, the tenants are not comfortable with the rental amount/year. The major concern is with the Easy monthly installment system (EMI), the real estate regulatory authority is all up to solve these issues.
The median monthly asking rent for shopping malls got squeezed by 2.3 percent compared to the beginning of 2021. Overall street retail rents fell by 1.8 percent QoQ. Overall asking rent for dry warehouses was QAR 43 per sqm, 5 percent as compared to 2021 and 1 percent over one year Hospitality sector witnessed a visible decline due to restrictions during Covid 19.
The tourism industry has seen a major cutback in international tourism as compared to the year 2020 where it was 86% higher than the current year. If we compare international Vs domestic tourism, the stats are showing a higher occupancy rate in domestic tourism, also hotels have booked around 26% more rooms as compared to the year 2021.
Office stock was calculated to stand at 5.6 million sqm GLA (Gross Leasable Area) with a completion of 76,000 sqm GLA during Q2 2021. The average asking rent for an office in the city lied at QAR 76 percent sqm, fallen off 2.6 percent as compared to Q1  2021 and 7.6 percent over a year.