Decline in Qatar’s real estate was “much softer” in H1

KPMG recently released their Qatar Real Estate Rental Index Q1 2016 – Q2 2020, which tracks quarterly changes in the real estate rental market covering three core asset categories-KPMG Office Rental Index (K-ORI), KPMG Residential Rental Index (K-RRI) and KPMG Mall Rental Index (K-MRI).

The latest KPMG Qatar Real estate Rental Index showed that in the pre Covid -19 phase during Q1 2020, residential real estate’ affordable segment witnessed increased vacancy levels.

“Qatar real estate market has not been impacted much in the first half of 2020, as the developers are still waiting to assess the overall impact of Covid-19, which we believe will be more visible in Q3, 2020”, said Anurag Gupta, director and head (Strategy & Real Estate) at KPMG.

“The same is also reflected in our rental indices across three asset classes, which have shown marginal falls. Interestingly, the decline has been much softer than the decline we witnessed over Q1 and Q2 2019. This also indicates that going forward, developers may be willing to accept lower occupancy and keep resisting the rental fall,” he added.

Q1 and Q2 2020 witnessed a cumulative 1.56% drop in the rental index compared to 3.36% during the last two quarters of 2019.

While the same period (Q1 and Q2) during 2019 witnessed a decline in the rental index by 2.33%.