Recent investments in property benefits Lebanese real estate developers and buyers

ENAR

IN BRIEF Prior to October 17, 2019, the real estate market was suffering from high developer debt and low interest rates on deposits.Lack of trust in banks has since then lead to an uptick in real estate investments, which in turn has allowed developers to pay back their bank loans. Long-term implications on the sector are dependent on the performance of the new government. The 1st century Arab poet Al-Mutanabbi could be describing a current scenario in Lebanon when he wrote “masa’eb kawm ‘and kawm fawa’id,” that what is seen as a catastrophe by some is an opportunity for others. The real estate sector in Lebanon has been suffering from a slowdown since 2014, although hard data is largely unreliable and anecdotal (see Executive’s December 2018 article). Reasons behind the sector’s woes include increased interest rates on the bank loans of real estate developers—which reached up to 13.5 percent—and the