What's safer than gold for UAE residents?

Real estate is a more popular investment asset class than gold among UAE residents, a new survey reveals.

Property makes up 53 per cent of UAE residents’ investment portfolios, compared with 43 per cent holding traditional “safe haven” asset gold, according to the survey by IP Global, conducted via YouGov.

The next popular asset classes were commodities, bonds and stocks as well as fixed/time deposits, with these being found in the investment portfolios of 29 per cent of respondents.

Around a thousand UAE residents were polled to determine the property investment sentiment across the emirate.

“As gold is typically considered a ‘safe haven’ asset when currency markets are volatile, this likely indicates that UAE residents currently have sufficient confidence in the currency markets to invest in property and to diversify their investment portfolios,” said Paul Preston, Director and Head of IP Global in the Middle East.

Of those UAE residents who have invested in property, 41 per cent have invested in properties overseas, compared with just 12 per cent owning property in the UAE, suggesting that confidence is greater in the overseas property market at present.

However, this could change with 57 per cent of those polled naming Dubai as their next preferred property investment destination, compared with just 21 per cent who consider London, a city often dubbed “the property safe haven of the world”, as the location of their next property purchase.

“More people are starting to see property investment as one of the highest performing asset classes within their investment portfolios. There is definitely an increasing confidence in the Dubai property market presently, although with property prices already starting to cool and Dubai typically being more cyclical than other global markets, we’re seeing sustained interest in overseas property markets from investors at Cityscape Global 2014 in Dubai,” said Preston.

“We’re not just seeing interest in the traditionally popular Prime London areas either, with investors at Cityscape eyeing up properties in less well-known Outer London areas with higher rental yield potential.  We’re also seeing more interest than ever before in markets outside of the UK, such as New York, Miami and Chicago in the US and Melbourne and Brisbane in Australia,” he said.

Preston’s findings correlate with investor sentiment in the survey, with New York being the next popular investment location after London for 13 per cent of UAE residents and followed by 8 per cent of respondents choosing Melbourne and Miami.

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