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* Rising Rents Leave Tenants in Lurch

Apartments become costlier by 10 to 50PC in Abu Dhabi due to shortage of buildings

Apartments become costlier by 10 to 50PC in Abu Dhabi due to shortage of buildings. Residents in Abu Dhabi are facing a sudden rise in apartment rents due to what property dealers call a growing gap between demand and supply in the real estate industry.

Rents for apartments, according to dealers and tenants, have gone up between 10 to 50 percent recently as a result of an increasing demand for accommodation and the shortage of properties.

There has been an increase in the rents of almost all the new and fairly new apartments managed by private real estate agencies as well as the Department of Social Services and Commercial Buildings.

Property dealers told Gulf News that the situation has been created due to a lack of new residential buildings coming up in the last three years.

Mohammed Ali, Manager of Waves Property, echoed similar reasons, saying there is also a demand from property owners to increase the rents.

Ali agreed that there is a shortage of apartments in Abu Dhabi and said it was for the same reasons as attributed by other property dealers. “The main problem is there are no new buildings coming up to meet the demand.”

However, a top official from the Department of Social Services and Commercial Buildings told Gulf News that plans are underway to increase the number of properties in Abu Dhabi to meet the rising demand for apartments.

“Rents have been raised because the availability of vacant flats has reduced over the past few years. This is an industry where the demand has increased while the availability of flats reduced, so naturally some prices are going up,” Al Dhaheri said.

He added that a recent project to increase the number of buildings would help cover the needs of the majority of apartment hunters. The number of studio and one-bedroom apartments will be increased under the planned project to meet the rising demand for these two categories.

Such ambitious projects notwithstanding, rising rents have forced many residents to give up their current dwellings and hunt for flats in the suburbs and remote areas of the city.

A number of people interviewed by Gulf News said the sudden increase has hurt their annual domestic budget as housing allowances from employers are simply too small to cover 45 percent of the rent they are paying.

In high demand

Several Abu Dhabi residents said they were looking for cheaper flats outside the heart of the city as they can no longer afford spiralling apartment rents.