JEDDAH: Hotel and shopping complex projects, followed by the construction of residential units and tourist projects have topped the list of investment activities in Makkah province in recent years.
“While hotel and commercial complexes received top investment attention, investments in the housing sector are not commensurate with the region’s projected demand for them in the next few years.
Jeddah alone will need 1 million housing units out of 5.4 million required in the entire Kingdom over the next 10 years,” Ahmad Al-Muhandis, member of the Real Estate Committee at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry told Arab news on the sidelines of the Jeddah International Real Estate, Financing and Housing Exhibition which opened in Jeddah on Monday.
More than 90 real estate companies are participating in the five-day real estate exhibition organized by the Al-Jeel Exhibition and Conference Company. Because the exhibition’s emphasis is on low and middle income housing, visitor numbers are expected to reach 300,000 before its close on Friday.
Al-Muhandis estimated that real estate investments in Makkah province over the next three years at SR50 billion with the largest share in the hotel construction sector.
He noted that Saudis had a special fondness for investments in the real estate sector. “Saudis invested more than SR1 trillion in the real estate sector last year, making the Kingdom the second largest real estate market in the world after the United States. The fixed assets in the sector in the Kingdom rose by 40 percent in the period between 2000-2006,” the real estate committee member said.
However, he believes that the prices of land and housing units in the country will fall in the light of ongoing stiff competition in the local market and the declining prices of construction materials.
He added that many of the Kingdom’s real estate companies were watching market trends since they do not know whether the current global financial crisis will reflect negatively or positively on the local market.
He hoped that the expo would result in deals worth SR10 billion.
