PRIVATE HOUSING MURSHID 2014 Brief on Real Estate Union Real Estate Association was established in 1990 by a distinguished group headed by late Sheikh Nasser Saud Al-Sabah who exerted a lot of efforts to establish the Association. Bright visionary objectives were the motives to establish the Association. The Association works to sustainably fulfil these objectives through institutional mechanisms, which provide the essential guidelines and controls. The Association seeks to act as an umbrella gathering the real estate owners and represent their common interests in the business community, overseeing the rights of the real estate professionals and further playing a prominent role in developing the real estate sector to be a major and influential player in the economic decision-making in Kuwait. The Association also offers advisory services that improve the real estate market in Kuwait and enhance the safety of the real estate investments, which result in increasing the market attractiveness for more investment. The Association considers as a priority keeping the investment interests of its members and increase the membership base to include all owners segments of the commercial and investment real estate. Summary Private housing segment is the single most important segment of real estate industry in Kuwait. The land parcels zoned for private housing account for 78% of all land parcels in Kuwait and the segment is the main source of wealth (as family houses) for most of the households. This report is written with an objective to provide a comprehensive analysis of this segment with the historical trends of prices, rental activities, and impact of land features on property prices. Kuwait has 185,456 private housing land parcels of which 141,418 are already developed into houses and the remaining 44,038 are vacant. The vacancy ratio is quite low at 23.7%. 1. Of the total vacant land parcels, around 61% are concentrated in the four areas of Sabah Al Ahmad Residential, Sabah Al Ahmad Marine City, North West Sulibikhat and Jaber Al Ahmad City. These are the new areas under development. 2. Just 16,981 vacant land parcels are available outside of these four new areas. 3. If we exclude these four areas and calculate the vacancy ratio of all private housing areas in Kuwait, the ratio is just 10.8%. We have tracked the price of houses in each area and with that we have been able to put a value of all houses in Kuwait. The average house price at the end of 2014 was KD 414,443. The combined value is KD 55.1 billion. Similarly, values were assigned to each vacant land parcel also and the combined value is KD 15.5 billion. In total, the combined value of all private housing real estate is around KD 70.6 billion or USD 250 billion. This is more than the GDP of Kuwait in 2014. House Prices Trends and Sustainability The prices of land and houses remain one of the key issues in the market with little clarity on their historical trends and sustainability. The average land price was KD 334 per sq.m. in 2007 that increased to KD 698 per sq.m in 2014. This price is 109% higher than the average prices in 2007. The compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of land prices between 2007 and 2014 is 11.1%. • The average house price was around KD 219,000 in 2007 that has increased to KD 414,000 by the year 2014. • The rate of house price increase was very high during 2011 till 2013. Particularly in 2013, the house prices went up by 28%. The growth rate has moderated somewhat in 2014 with 9% increase. • Overall, the house prices increased by 90% between 2007 and 2014 – CAGR of 9.6%. In the period of 2007 till 2014, the price of land for private houses increased at an annual rate of 11.1% while the house prices increased at an annual rate of 9.6%. This is due to the fact that the vacant land parcels in Kuwait are very few and there is high demand for housing. • Doha topped the list with a CAGR of 18.0% over the period of 2007 till 2014. This is quite phenomenal rate of appreciation, as the rate is nearly double the rate for Kuwait as a whole. • This is followed by Khaitan that experienced 15.2% CAGR, Qasr 14.4% CAGR, Ahmadi 14.1%, Fahaheel 13.6% and Firdous 12.8% CAGR. • The areas with lowest growth rates in house prices are Yarmouk, Jabriya, Abdulla Al Salem, Mubarak Al Abdulla, Shamiya and Shaab. All these areas are in Capital Governorate and Hawalli Governorate. Are House Prices Overvalued in Kuwait? Globally, one of the most important factors to assess if the house prices are overvalued or correctly valued is to compare the average house price to the average household income data. Since the primary source of funding a house purchase is household income, the house prices must maintain a close relationship with the household disposable incomes. • The ratio of house prices to family annual income was around 7.08 in 2007, which increased to 7.67 in 2008. As the house prices dropped in 2009, the ratio dropped back to 5.95. • By 2011, the ratio recovered back to 7.62 and by 2014 the value is 9.83. In simply terms, a household needs to set aside nearly 10 years of full income to be able to buy a house. • The ratio is 5.07 for UK and 3.20 for the US. In Western Europe, Switzerland has a ratio of 3.27 where the monetary authorities are comfortable with its level. In Germany, the ratio is 5.35 and there are concerns raised by most financial institutions about the possibility of a bubble in house prices. • Australia has a ratio of 4.69 and after concerted effort by the Central Bank to reduce activities in the house prices. Against these ratios in the world, Kuwait’s ratio of 9.82 appears very high. • We have compared the same ratio of house prices to annual incomes of prominent cities and urban clusters in Europe and the US. • We see the values of the ratios at city levels in the US, UK and Europe are in the range of 9 to 20. For example, the ratio for the City of London is 18.94 and Paris is 15.15 for the year 2014. • New York houses are trading at 9.04 times income and Zurich houses are trading at 7.94 ratio. • Kuwait with its urban area of around 1,000 sq km population of 4 million and GDP size of around USD 200 billion is comparable to a large city in Europe or the US. Thus, it is advisable to compare the ratio of house prices to income in Kuwait to the ratios of these cities. • When seen against the city ratios, the value of the ratio in Kuwait doesn’t appear to be closer to a crisis level. Rental Activities in Private Housing Areas in Kuwait Given the acute shortage of private housing in Kuwait, several families are living in rented places in private housing areas. Two types of rental stock exists in private housing areas of Kuwait: 1. Several houses have a few apartments constructed on different floors. The property owner remains the primary occupant of the property and these apartments are leased to family and friends. In many cases, these are also leased to unrelated Kuwaiti families. 2. There are thousands of houses that are made as apartment blocks with apartments on all floors. In most of such cases, the owner does not live in the property and the apartments are leased to Kuwaiti and non-Kuwaiti families. The second type of properties are covered in details in this report. We have comprehensive coverage of 895 properties across various areas in Kuwait and further 3,476 properties were counted across all areas in Kuwait. • We have information on 4,371 properties that are made as apartment blocks. There are 51,058 apartments in these properties. We believe that we have covered nearly 90% of this segment for all areas of Kuwait. • We believe that the market has another 50,000 apartments that of first type as described above. Therefore, the total inventory of apartments in private housing areas is around 100,000. This is around 30% of the inventory of apartments in the investment areas in Kuwait. • During our field surveys, we found 1,347 vacant apartments. The occupancy of this segment is 97.4%, which is higher than the occupancy ratio of around 95% for the investment areas in Kuwait. Such a high occupancy ratio clearly points to high demand relative to the supply in the market. • The average monthly of an apartment is KD 371, which is substantially higher than the average rent of KD 313 for the investment section. The higher rental is due to the presence of large apartments in the mix. Index Introduction House Prices Trends and Sustainability Rental Activities in Private Housing Areas in Kuwait Effect of Land Parcel Features on Prices Private Housing Trends and Statistics of Different Locations in Kuwait Appendix 1 – Definitions of Terms 6 12 20 24 28 164 Introduction Private housing segment is the single most important segment of real estate industry in Kuwait. The land parcels zoned for private housing account for 78% of all land parcels in Kuwait and the segment is the main source of wealth (as family houses) for most of the households. This report is written with an objective to provide a comprehensive analysis of this segment with the historical trends of prices, rental activities, and impact of land features on property prices.