Property News · August 7, 2016

Proportion of commuters into Dubai is on the wane


It may seem unlikely if you are stuck in rush hour traffic out of Sharjah, but a report suggests the proportion of Dubai’s population commuting into the city is actually fallingFor thousands of low or moderately paid workers flocking to shops and offices across Dubai, commuting into the city from the northern emirates of Sharjah, Ajman and even Umm Al Quwain is an economic necessity because of high rents. More people than ever are trying to avoid high rents in Dubai by commuting into the city each day to work from satellite towns and cities where rents are 30 to 40 per cent cheaper, according to Reidin data. A total of 1.1 million people working in Dubai actually live outside the emirate – 31.1 per cent of the city’s daytime population – and take 90 minutes or more to commute one way. Some say they wake at 4am to beat the traffic jams.But although the total number of commuters in Dubai has increased more than five-fold over the past decade from less than 200,000 in 2005, analysts say that the proportion of Dubai’s population commuting into the city is actually on the wane.According to the property data company Reidin and the boutique investment banking firm Global Capital Partners, the number of Dubai workers who lived outside the emirate increased from 1.08 million in 2014 to 1.1 million last year – representing nearly a third (31.7 per cent) of the total population.”Of course the total number of people commuting to Dubai from the Northern Emirates has increased, but what we are seeing is that the proportion of the population doing this has been falling,” says Sameer Lakhani, the managing director of Global Capital Partners.GCP number crunchers say that as the populations of both Dubai and the Northern Emirates have increased and the amount of affordable housing in Dubai has risen, the proportion of commuters in the city has actually fallen from 37.1 per cent in 2009 to 31.1 per cent last year following the property boom, when housing rents tripled.However, the company says that although rents in Dubai again rocketed by about 30 per cent in 2013 and 2014, the proportion of Dubai’s daytime population choosing to commute in to the city still fell.GCP attributes the fall to an increase in the amount of so-called affordable housing in Dubai, where annual rents for two-bedroom flats in projects such as International City, Discovery Gardens and Dubai Silicon Oasis stand at below Dh70,000 a year.”We think that with the new focus of developers in the affordable housing segment, the proportion of residents residing outside Dubai will continue to fall further,” Mr Lakhani adds.On Saturday, the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s changed its outlook on Sharjah’s economy to negative, noting that the emirate’s population had increased by 63 per cent since 2005, surprising the agency and prompting it to revise its estimates for GDP per capita.lbarnard@thenational.aeFollow The National’s Business section on Twitter

Source : thenational.ae
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