Rentals in posh communities of Dubai showed a steep climb during the third quarter of this year, according to a report from Bayut.com, a leading real estate portal.

The upward trend is expected to continue in Q4 as well, the report said.

The situation in Abu Dhabi, however, is still in the favour of tenants as the emirate continues to face oversupply which resulted in a decline in both rentals as well as prices.

The  report is based on the findings of 603,165 unique searches made for Dubai and Abu Dhabi rental properties on Bayut.com, it said.

Both buying and rental search trends at Bayut.com depicted an active UAE realty market in Q3, it said.

The signs of growth in Dubai’s rental market, which was first predicted in Merrill Lynch's report earlier this year, have finally begun to be more evident.

As many as 603,165 Bayut.com visitors were interested in rental properties during Q3 as opposed to 589,056 unique visitors who were looking to buy property in both the cities.

Bayut recorded higher activity for rental properties in Abu Dhabi where all top three locations i.e., Al Reem Island, Al Raha Beach and Khalifa City A got a stellar start in Q3, registering 100, 99 and 76 popularity index (PI) points on the charts respectively, the company said.

In July, Al Reem Island occupied the top spot by attracting 4,204 unique visitors, followed by Al Raha Beach with 4,149 and Khalifa City A with 3,184. According to Jones Lang LaSalle report of Abu Dhabi property market, residential market has suffered a 48 per cent decline in its rental value since its peak in 2008 and it might just as well continue to face this trend in Q4.

In Dubai, the rents and search trends were on the rise. Throughout the Q3, the city’s top three developments retained their ranks and demonstrated an increase in their PI points as well as visitor numbers.

Dubai Marina, which is the overall top development in Dubai with flat 100 PI points throughout 2012, received 22,135 unique visitors in July and this number swelled to 24,856 in September. JLT, which retained its second position in Dubai rental trends during Q3 bagged 41 PI points in July and gained four solid points in August. The number of visitors interested in JLT properties also went up with the rents as the number of its unique visitors increased from 8,516 in July to 10,443 in September.

With controlled supply and good quality of construction, high end apartment communities performed well throughout Q3 where the rental prices increased by as much as 7 per cent, as per the Q3 report released by Asteco earlier this month.

Bayut.com is a leading Dubai real estate portal that offers general buyers, sellers, realtors, investors, developers and tenants a platform to get in touch with each other. –TradeArabia News Service