Dubai Buying Sprees Won’t Slow During Ramadan, Report Predicts

The Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins this week, is unlikely to slow the upward momentum hitting Dubai’s real estate market so far this year, according to a new report.

Dubai logged a 45% surge in the value of transactions in the first quarter of 2017  compared to a year before, according to a report Tuesday from Propertyfinder Group, a popular listing website in the United Arab Emirates. Many industries, particularly nightlife, slow during the holy month, while offices shorten workdays and people spend more time at home. But data from the past several years show that real estate activity—especially online searches—remains steady, the listing site said.

More:Read More About Luxury Real Estate in Dubai on Mansion Global

"Many naturally assume that this will be a quiet period, but online searches and enquiries on propertyfinder.ae indicate in fact the opposite," Lukman Hajje, Propertyfinder Group’s chief commercial officer, said in the report.

Dubai sees an annual peak in real estate transactions in the mild winter months of January and February, with daily enquiries 11% to 23% above average. Activity then drops off during the hot months between April and July, when temperatures regularly hit 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 degrees Celsius), and picks up again in August before the school year begins, according to the report.

But Ramadan does not alter the annual pattern in house hunters’ behavior, even in the dog days of summer.

In fact the holy month may promote more time searching for properties thanks to long days spent at home fasting completely from food and drink, coupled with the excruciating heat of Dubai summers.

"(They) have excess time to search online," Mr. Hajje said in the report. "Consumers are spending more and more of their free time browsing the web on their mobiles, tablets, laptops, desktops and even their Smart TVs."