Analysts have debated for some time whether Dubai's five-year building boom is an economic miracle or a bubble waiting to burst.
Sharp real estate dealers juggle mobile phones, buying 20 or 30 apartments in one project at a time and flicking them on to investors in Britain, Iran and India almost in the same breath.
The energy and the deals can be breathtaking. Soheil Abedian, managing director of the James Packer-backed Sunland International, said one client paid $US1 million in a non-refundable deposit just to have first choice in its latest project at the Dubai Waterfront.
It is this kind of frenzy that has led some to predict it can't go on at this level for much longer and that sooner or later there will be a massive oversupply.
'The market needs to slow down,' said Marwan bin Ghalita, chief executive of Dubai's Real Estate Regulatory Agency. 'There are too many speculators and they can hurt the market. Real estate isn't like the stock market; it's a long term investment. Only in Dubai do you see people flipping apartments to make fast money and this isn't helping.'
But the population growth alone is a sign that it won't end in the near future, according to one of the biggest developers.
'I don't think there is any other city in the world where you can see an existing airport being upgraded, a new airport being built, and a new rail system that will be operational by September,' said Chris O'Donnell, chief executive of developer Nakheel.
Together the two airports will have the capacity to bring in 190 million passengers a year. The population is expected to grow at more than 6 per cent a year from 1.7 to more than 4 million by 2020.
O'Donnell points out that Dubai's construction capacity is limited to about 80,000 residential dwellings a year and demand based on population growth is exceeding that.
Adel al-Shirawi, vice chairman of Istithmar World, a government-owned investment company scoffs at the idea of a real estate collapse. 'The way people talk about bubbles, it's like we were a bubble gum factory. Dubai has increased the value of the desert,' he said.
Even the sceptical can be persuaded otherwise. 'Yes, I'm sceptical that there is real end demand for all the luxury housing,' said Eckart Woertz, a Dubai-based analyst at the Gulf Research Centre. 'On the other hand, people are moving in, and you never know a bubble until it bursts.'
