UK estate agents seek refuge in Gulf

As the UK records its worst fall in house prices ever, property firms could soon be looking for greener pastures.

UK estate agencies are looking to the Middle East to bolster dwindling earnings in their home market, where a 12 per cent drop in annual house prices and a lack of credit has resulted in plunging home sales. Humberts Limited is planning a network of offices in the Middle East, with the first to open in Abu Dhabi by the end of this year. "The group decided to enter the Middle East a long time before the property crisis hit the UK and the rest of the world," said Walter Hart, the managing director of Humberts Middle East. "But the decision to come here has been beneficial for financial and human resource reasons, in that these will be enhanced because the market has declined in the UK. It helps to spread our risk. A buoyant market in the Middle East will help to cover losses at home." Humberts Limited was bought by the UK company Mercantile Group from the loss-making Humberts Group shortly after it went into administration in June. The latest survey from the UK's Nationwide Building Society released yesterday showed UK house prices had fallen at the fastest annual rate on record. And according to the UK-based Centre for Economic Business Research, an estimated 15,000 estate agents were expected to lose their jobs by the end of the year. Humberts plans to recruit staff from its UK offices to cover the Middle East region as well as hire locally. "There are estate agents in the UK who are very experienced but who are having a difficult time at home at the moment, so it would make sense for them to come here to further their careers," said Mr Hart, who was a former director at the Dubai office of Better Homes. Mr Hart said the company was confident of the continuing property sales prospects in the Middle East market, despite the global downturn. "But what I can see happening, particularly in Dubai, is a gradual softening in rental prices as more apartments come on to the market in the next year or two in places like Jumeirah Lake Towers, the Discovery Gardens and Jumeirah Village." Knight Frank, which has 165 offices around the world, has hired Don Bradley, who was previously the chief executive of Cluttons in the Middle East, as its regional chief executive. "As other markets are changing, the Middle East remains as strong as it has ever been, and Knight Frank wanted to be here irrespective of what was happening elsewhere," Mr Bradley said. [e-mail]