By Mahmoud Ali
Turkish real-estate dominated the scene at the Cityscape Exhibition for real-estate investment that was held two weeks ago in Kuwait and included showcasing a set of different projects from Dubai, the Sultanate of Oman, and Turkey markets.
Commenting on the participation, Sheikh Mubarak Al-Sabah, Assistant CEO for Marketing and Sales, said: “Cityscape Kuwait is the ideal platform to reciprocate information on the latest updates in the Kuwaiti real estate market. It is also a unique opportunity to build business relationships with local, regional and world investors. It contributes as well to opening marketing windows to participants from inside and outside Kuwait, as well as to investors seeking quality investment opportunities.”
Turkey, which issued a law in 2012 allowing foreigners to own real-estate properties, has managed in this exhibition to attract a major sect of Gulf investors; especially from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Hussein Muhammad Abo-Abbas, General Manager of the Kuwaiti Awaed Company, said that Kuwait’s participation in this exhibition was modest, while Turkey stood out followed by Dubai, with a total absence of Egypt and Lebanon. He confirmed that the map of this year’s Cityscape Exhibition in Kuwait reflected the political developments on the ground as well as who has benefited from them and who has not.
Some analysts claim that the night before taking the decision to promulgate the foreign investments law in Turkey in 2012, the flow of the GCC investments increased by 500 per cent; i.e., nearly 24 per cent of the total amount of foreign sales. Reidin Company for real estate market information services, which focuses on emerging markets, has released numbers that show that investments in the Gulf has multiplied 5 times more since the successful amendment of the law.
