Real estate sales in Oman grow by 124% to OMR7.6b

Muscat: Oman’s real estate sales registered a massive 124.3 per cent growth for the first 10 months of 2016 to OMR7.6 billion, over the same period of last year, which was valued at OMR3.4 billion, according to latest data released by the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI).
Fees collected
Fees collected from legal transactions in the real estate sector rose 34.1 per cent to OMR54.2 million while traded value of sales contracts dipped by 16.2 per cent to OMR857.3 million, along with a 9.8 per cent fall in the number of sales contracts, which declined to 59,997 from 66,540 in the prior year.
In contrast, the number of mortgage contracts increased 4.8 per cent to 19,532 with a substantial 186 per cent growth in the value of mortgage contracts at OMR6.8 billion.
Barter contracts, however, suffered a 42 per cent drop in the number of contracts at 658, and an accompanying 45.2 per cent fall in the value of barter contracts, which slipped to OMR9.7 million from last year’s OMR17.6 million.
The issued properties too took a hit during the January-October period, with the number of issued properties shrinking by 1.5 per cent to 196,651.
GCC citizens
Properties issued to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) citizens logged a major 24.5 per cent drop to 1,480 contracts during the period, as against 1,959 properties issued to them over the same period of last year.
During October alone, properties worth OMR247.7 million were traded. As many as 17,530 properties were issued in the month, of which 178 properties went to GCC citizens. The value of real estate transactions in the Sultanate for the whole of 2015 stood at OMR4.1 billion, the NCSI report said.