For a country facing economic turmoil and new business risk at every turn in the road this year, Lebanon sports an alarmingly content real estate sector. Intermediaries whose livelihoods depend directly on commissions from arranging sales and rental contracts are not frantically waving red flags as many other of the country’s economic agencies are. “The [sales] market is in slow motion since the beginning of 2011 until today, but there is still a market and it is not down,” said Walid Moussa, chief executive of PBM, a real estate brokerage and facilities management company, as well as secretary of the board of the Real Estate Association of Lebanon (REAL). “I always say the market is sleeping. When you sleep you wake up and just continue.” Over at Ramco, one of the oldest intermediaries and consultancies in the Lebanese real estate sector, Director Karim Makarem agreed that both demand and prices
