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Property in Dubai offered for as little as $100 - 31 July 2009

An expat couple who are leaving Dubai for good are offering their four-bedroom apartment in the Green Community in Dubai for as little as $100 through and online auction site. The couple, who are planning to return to the UK after some 18 years in Dubai, have set up the auction following their difficulties in finding a buyer since the start of the global economic downturn.

Steve and Arti Halligan have found their apartment in Dubai too difficult to sell on the open market since the beginning of the credit crunch and will put their home up for an auction with a difference. They will operate a ‘lowest unique bid’ auction through the humraz.com website. Bidder will each buy a ‘seat’ at the auction for between $50 and $100 and then submit as many bids as they wish. The winner of the auction, and therefore the new buyer of the property, will be the person who has bid the lowest amount above the $50 minimum. The catch is that to win the lot you have to be the only person to have bid that price. Therefore, the winning bidder could conceivably pay just $100 for a four-bedroom apartment.

Such is the dire situation of the resale property market in the Emirate that they feel they will make more money through the use of a ‘lowest unique bid’ auction hosted by the website humraz.com. The credit crunch has hit Dubai’s expat population particularly deeply as companies cut back on overseas operations and foreigners who lose their jobs then need to find other work quickly to maintain their visa status.

The property market in Dubai has also been hit hard, with the volumes of new buyer the developers need to continue and complete projects disappearing. As developers offer more and more attractive terms and prices to entice buyers, prices in the resale market have been driven down so that owners are left with the prospect of negative equity in a state which does not tolerate defaulted debt. Even traditional auctions in Dubai have failed to shift properties as was hoped. Three auctions have been held in Dubai in the past three months, each of which failed to make a single sale.

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