Morning round-up: Sorouh rethinks Reem Island project


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Sorouh Real Estate is looking at rescheduling its Shams project on Reem Island in Abu Dhabi and is cutting prices at some of its developments because of slow sales, The National's Bradley Hope reports. The efforts to streamline the company come as it announced second-quarter earnings of Dh151 million (US$41.1m), a 75.5 per cent drop compared with the same period last year.

Thirty-five per cent is a manageable recovery rate when it comes to mortgage defaults and 50 per cent should be considered an excellent recovery rate, according to Chris Green, Managing Director at Independent Finance, a specialist financial services company. "The other half will probably result in repossessions and auctions and the lenders will recover more of their losses over a period of time," he told Emirates Business 24/7.

And Arabian Business reports that Dubai rents continued to plunge in July, though a few areas like the Arabian Ranches saw "marginal rent growth" as people moved into bigger properties.

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Another way to earn air miles

In addition to the Emirates and Etihad programmes, there is the Air Miles Middle East card, which offers members the ability to choose any airline, has no black-out dates and no restrictions on seat availability. Air Miles is linked up to HSBC credit cards and can also be earned through retail partners such as Spinneys, Sharaf DG and The Toy Store.

An Emirates Dubai-London round-trip ticket costs 180,000 miles on the Air Miles website. But customers earn these ‘miles’ at a much faster rate than airline miles. Adidas offers two air miles per Dh1 spent. Air Miles has partnerships with websites as well, so booking.com and agoda.com offer three miles per Dh1 spent.

“If you use your HSBC credit card when shopping at our partners, you are able to earn Air Miles twice which will mean you can get that flight reward faster and for less spend,” says Paul Lacey, the managing director for Europe, Middle East and India for Aimia, which owns and operates Air Miles Middle East.