''It won’t be so easy to finance projects and the government can’t furnish cash for an unlimited amount of time'', points out John Sandiwick, director of Cityscape Dubai 2007. Richard Rodriguez, former managing director of EMAAR, a UAE construction giant and seventh largest in the world, agrees, ''There will be a slowing of real estate markets. Dubai and Abu Dhabi are still relatively small markets on a global scale and are thus reactive and heavily influenced by global trends. Either the pace will drop or prices will. Both cannot be sustained in this market condition''.
Although the United Arab Emirates have only been marginally hit by the global financial crisis that started on Wall Street, the most significant drops on the Emirate stock exchanges have been in real estate; EMAAR has fallen 29% in the last six months.
Marwan Bin Ghalita, however, remains optimistic; the chief executive of Dubai’s Real Estate Regulatory Agency (RERA), defends the solidity of the local market because it is ''not exposed, if not only in a minimum way, to the international market'', and Sultan Butti Bin Mejren, director general of the Dubai Land Department is convinced that ''the subprime mortgage crisis hasn’t done anything to Dubai'' and maintains that ''it's bringing people to Dubai''.
Amidst these ongoing and contradictory predictions for the future of the real estate market in the Emirates, ''Cityscape 2008'' opens today in Dubai. The large real estate showcase lasts until October 9 and will be an excellent occasion to take the pulse of the confidence held  by the main players and investors in the UAE property sector.
October 6

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