Downtown Beirut has become so desolate and empty that one almost expects to find tumbleweeds rolling in between vacant restaurant tables. But a walk through the Central Business District can feel even more surreal, because while streets look barren, construction sites are working at full steam. Hundreds of cranes, concrete structures, excavation craters and trucks careening through an empty city center can make Lebanon look slightly schizophrenic. However, while puzzling at first sight, the high activity of Lebanon’s real estate industry is not (just) rooted in the country’s notorious resilience — it makes outright economic sense. After a war whose destructive effects that cost the country billions of dollars, five months without a president, a parliament that has not met since November 2007 and an opposition sit-in that has paralyzed part of the capital’s business center, one could expect real estate investors to be looking for greener pastures. But the
