Property investors who are interested in acquiring property in the Middle East will breathe a sigh of relief that one of the main points of competition they have in that endeavour has decided to put their newfound profits into property ventures outside of the Middle East.
Nakheel, a government-owned property developer in Dubai that is responsible for the creation of The World and The Universe, has decided that their next project is to increase their influence abroad. Specifically, the company has increased the stake they own in Australian property developer Mirvac. Nakheel has increased their stake in the company to 12.5% from the previous level of 6.5% it already had.
Additionally, the stake was purchased for about 7% above the actual price of the shares, showing that Nakheel is definitely serious about throwing money around when it comes to investing in foreign property markets.
Nakheel has made the move in an effort to expand into the Australian property market, expecting to add some projects in Australia to the currently $60 billion worth of projects they have going in the Middle East.
This is good news for investors in Dubai because it appears as if one of the major competitors in the Dubai property market has decided to look elsewhere for a significant amount of time and that should allow property investors a chance to sit back and really examine investments before plunging in whereas at other times they might have been tempted to do just that on the back of fears that developers like Nakheel might snatch up the property first.
However, with this good news comes bad news on the part of people interested in investing in property development companies, as analysts have pointed out that Nakheel is very unlikely to offer stock publicly. There had been speculation that the government-owned company might follow the route of sister company DP World, but the chairman of Nakheel stated that outcome was unlikely.
