Dubai Property Recovery "to Happen" in 2011, only if...

Rents on property in Dubai, have fallen by up to 50% with between 10 and 30% being the average. Even the man-made marvel Palm Jumeirah have fallen by around a third, according to new research by Landmark advisory.

Meanwhile Bloomberg -- which is rapidly becoming known to me as a publication that airs on the side of talking up the markets -- headlined the familiar, Dubai to recover in 2011 after downturn. This time various spokespeople from Dubai property company Deyaar are behind the headline.

Apparently, 2009 is to be the year of the fall, 2010 will be the stabilising year and "in 2011 the recovery will happen," said their CEO Markus Giebel.

The recovery will happen. By some magic all the negatives will be washed away, all the thousands of foreign buyers will be brought back, all the cancelled developments will be completed and everyone around the world will forget there was ever a problem with the Dubai property market.

Well, I don't believe in magic, so I will revert to my original belief for the Dubai real estate market, and that is: if the marketers go back to marketing Dubai property on the strengths of Dubai, rather than marketing Dubai property on the strengths of Dubai property, then a slow recovery will probably begin when prices return to their 2006 levels, and/or when there is a recovery around the world, whichever comes first. This may well be by 2011, but the recovery will not be speedy whenever it happens.

If nothing is done to change Dubai's image and what it is marketed on, that is to say, purely on the strength of foreign investment, now we have seen the consequences of such a strategy, then it will be lucky ever to recover -- and certainly won't be doing so anytime soon.