Too many offices
Officials tell us what we all already know;
The current lack of demand for office space is causing problems within the commercial real estate market in Qatar, according to officials who said that the situation should resolve itself in the future but that prices may not return to the high levels seen in the recent past.
Yet still they build;
With the continued construction of numerous office block towers in the West Bay area of Doha, the supply of commercial rental space is beginning to outstrip its demand
In some cases prices have nearly halved;
prices for commercial space in West Bay have decreased from around QR300 per sqm to around QR185 in some instances.
Source: http://gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=305476&ver...
No it didn't stop the afrikaaners. They had aparthied to legally enforce whatever passed for their culture. Once it ended a good percentage saw the good times were over and got out of the country any way they could. A large chunk of the people left are there because they couldn't get out. As for the qataris all the foreigners means first dilution of their culture and then evolution. Take English for example. It is more widely spoken here than Arabic and some qataris are more comfortable speaking English than the tounge of their fathers....
I have been told in the last couple of months that the number of towers in west bay is approx 60.
The plan is to increase to 300.
so go figure where its all going to go and the oversupply of ofice space.
not forgetting the likely congestion and lack of parking.
exiledsaint, the qataris can maintain their identity, just because a large number of foreigners are here doesn't mean they will lose it since they are so keen to get all the benefits of foreign interactions
being a minority didn't stop the afrikaans !
as a person who went here for work and money... i dont really care, or dont care that much, if qatar will re-claim the whole arabian sea.. and make 100's of buildings on it.... that means, more jobs for all of us.. if qatar stops constructing, well, that would be "bye-bye" for most of us..
life is not a destination, it always had been & always will be a journey.....
It will be much easier to conduct business in Gulf region. Bahrain is said to have given commitment to abolish sponsorship arrangements and procedures of visa will be simplified and no requirement of exit permits during the last ILO summit..
Qatar too had to restructure its Ministry of labour due to pressure from ILO.
It is grapevine that qatar is seriously weighing its option to do the same and bring it at par like dubai, where it is very easy to invest in business.
Lets wait for it to be officially out.
till now no one knows what to wear! r we in a liberal or conservative society?
They are building fir the future but they can't agree on what that future will be. The money for the projects in west bay was committed a long time ago so they cannot stop but the biggest problem they have is they are making it harder fot foreigners to live and do business. Qataris can't and will not fill up the offices and the houses so they need foriegn investors and workers but here is the problem. How do you maintain your identity when your country is flooded with foreigners? The answer is you cannot and your culture will evolve. Hence the disagreement on the future ......
Not a bad idea Dlightswitch. A lot of businesses are already using villas as offices, so why not vice-versa!
Perhaps we should all start renting offices instead of houses/apartments then?
so what? let them build more, let the offer be bigger than demand, and let the prices go down!
thus doha will become more competitive!
I think at the end of this year they will be able to forecast properly.
What bites many here in the ass is the slowly disappearing monopoly, competition is becoming reality and those whom are disorganized and apply a 1960's management style will drown.
A nice example of a drowning cat,
The corporate level of one of the biggest companies in the Doha Stock-market has recently refused to buy, for instance, Oracle, as it would be to complicated. It has changed its management to non-English and has expressed desire to solely work with written memo's in Arabic. Their stock has dropped, their products are cheap and poorly constructed and will face a huge problem in the coming years. no doubt.
trying to impress bussines man with all tower
Well lets be realistic, the economic downturn will have played a big part in this, with companies reconsidering whether they set up offices in places like Doha. As the article says, some companies are just sending over a couple of people rather than a whole office.
Reading comments on the price hikes at the Pearl, and follow with this... Someone has to "pay the piper".
Too much money and nowhere to put it.. so they build real estate - long term investment..
actually they're going to convert it into a mental rehabilitation center later for the crazy people strolling around Doha
they're preparing for something big. Bigger towers, bigger buildings, etc.