Reading Time: 8 minutes After living in France for 30 years, Jad Tabet, an architect and urban planner, returned to Lebanon early last year to run for the presidency of the Order of Engineers and Architects of Beirut (OEA), an independent trade syndicate covering all Lebanese regions bar the North. Tabet campaigned as an independent against Paul Najem, a…
A long time since the boom
Reading Time: 7 minutes Going into 2017, real estate stakeholders were riding a wave of optimism spurred by the end of a nearly three-year presidential vacuum and the formation of a unity government. After several years of market stagnation, developers willed themselves to believe that consumer confidence would be restored and residency uptake would finally resume. Buyers were also…
Meet the megas
Reading Time: 7 minutes The confidence many developers have in the Lebanese real estate market is certainly not inspired by the numbers. On paper 2015 and 2016 look like the two worst years since 2007, yet this year and last have seen the launch of a handful of large-scale residential projects – one of which is the largest development…
Data deficiency syndrome
Reading Time: 6 minutes Incomplete as they are, the numbers look bad for Lebanon’s real estate sector in 2015. Construction permits are down. The number of transactions is down. Cement deliveries are down. Full-year stats were not available at time of writing, but year-on-year comparisons of the most recent data point to a deepening slump after a boom phase…
PCH: An explainer
Reading Time: 4 minutes The housing loans that commercial banks offer with the support of the Public Corporation for Housing (PCH), colloquially known as Iskan loans or PCH loans, are engineered according to a smart financing formula that is advantageous for borrowers but nothing short of complicated. When a first time home buyer with Lebanese nationality and residency has…
A place all their own
Reading Time: 5 minutes So that every family may own a home. This, according to the chair-director general of Lebanon’s Public Corporation for Housing (PCH), Rony Lahoud, is the overarching idea under which the understaffed government agency pursues its mission of examining an endless stream of loan applications from Lebanese citizens. “It is hard work, but it’s amazing at…
Striking a balance
Reading Time: 6 minutes “This law is a step aimed at achieving justice, and after 30 years without a law this step has become necessary and inevitable,” said MP Robert Ghanem, chair of the Parliament’s Administration and Justice Committee, according to the minutes of April’s rent law meeting. The committee had met to amend the law after the Constitutional…
Tales from the sea
Reading Time: 11 minutes This article is part of an ongoing investigation on Beirut’s coast, from Raouche to Ramlet al-Baida. You can find the other articles here. *** It was 5 a.m. on Saturday May 2 when around 150 police officers descended on Dalieh. “I was there when they came,” Mohammad Itani tells Executive, speaking from outside the pile…
Renting on Lebanon’s black market
Reading Time: 6 minutes Sitting in the gloom of the single room that is now her family’s home, shadows from the small candle placed between us — the room’s only light — played against the wall as Asmar spoke of her flight from Syria. Asmar, who preferred not to give her surname, is just one of the estimated one…
Mismatch made in the heavens
Reading Time: 8 minutes As cities go, Beirut has every reason to be regarded as the grand dame of regional urbanity — a proud dowager that stands out among Arab metropolises as queen of style and savoir vivre. But she is filling out like a high school senior, especially around the upper floors of the priciest residential towers. Those…