A woman looks down upon central Beirut from the top floor of the Four Seasons Hotel, Beirut. Picture by Cormac Walsh
The Middle East sees its ranking fall in Mercer’s 2012 Worldwide Cost of Living Survey due largely to a drop in rental prices.The survey found that Beirut is the most expensive city to live in this year within the Middle East, moving up eight notches to number 67.
Mercer’s survey factors in the cost of living for 214 cities globally. The consultancy compares the price of more than 200 factors in each location, including housing, transport, food and clothing costs. [Link]
Beirut has become so expensive that even expats no longer can afford it. Maybe we should stop building 1000 square meters apartments for Arabs to rent/buy and start building reasonable flats with rational prices for Lebanese and the average tourist.
In response to the last sentence of your post: THANK YOU!
..While the market is STAGNANT..
a friend of mine (Expat for that matter) has been looking for an apartment in Hamra neighborhood for the past YEAR.. and he told me that the availability there has been the same since.. i mean these price$$$$$$$ are beyond reasonable.. as if the sellers are waiting to swindle potential buyers..
I second the opinion of having affordable small to medium flats instead of ever-increasing the apartments sizes and prices.
“Maybe we should stop building 1000 square meters …”
Najib,
That train departed a long time ago. Even before the civil war the “Gulfies” were buying prime properties in the mountains and Beirut. In the 1990’s under Hariri’s Premiership the sale of the land escalated as mostly Christians and Druze migrated away…Recently Persian money is at play.
What I am saying is that Lebanese sold their souls long time ago and most of the lands have followed suit.
Forget the expats. How about the residents of Lebanon? What’s in store for them?
I am in expat and I still hold on to hope that same day, Lebanon will be a peaceful and livable country..