Since July 2008, stock prices of real estate companies have plunged continuously. This is especially true in the UAE where investors fled the stock market due to bad expectations, the need for liquidity to cover losses in foreign markets, or because they were simply following the crowd. Yazan Abdeen, portfolio manager equities at ING Investment Management thinks “markets are smart in their nature. They have the ability to discount future expectations and the fears of investors.” In this case, investors began to expect the burst of a real estate bubble that would result in a plunge in property prices and lower valuations for real estate companies. “Regardless of the size of the company, I think that the market was taking into consideration some trends of action will take place that will yield in the deleveraging that has happened to these companies,” says Abdeen. At first, investors started to sell their
