Real estate transactions in Oman drop to OMR922m

Muscat: A 30.3 per cent slump witnessed in real estate transactions in the first quarter of this year at OMR922.1 million, against OMR1.32 billion for the same period last year, according to the latest report issued by the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI).
Fees collected by way of legal proceedings in the real estate sector increased by 23.7 per cent in the first quarter to touch OMR14.6 million compared with OMR11.8 million last year.
The value of sales contracts, on the other hand, posted a growth of 4.9 per cent at OMR297.1 million from last year’s OMR283.3 million, while the number of sales contracts saw a marginal increase of 0.3 per cent to 20,963 as against 20,894 contracts in 2015.
Meanwhile, traded value of mortgage contracts slumped by 40.2 per cent to OMR619.1 million from last year’s OMR1.03 billion, even as the number of contracts went up by 31.5 per cent to 6,969 compared with 5,300 mortgage contracts in the first quarter of 2015.
In all, 71,021 properties were issued in the first quarter, a growth of 14.7 per cent over last year’s 61,918 issued properties. However, the quarter witnessed a 39.5 per cent decline in the number of properties issued to GCC nationals, which fell from 806 properties in the first quarter of 2015 to 488 properties during the same quarter of the current year, the NCSI report added.