Pakistan's property market will remain active in the coming years and the upward trend for prices will continue due to a shortage of housing units in the country, according to property developers.

"We know for a fact that there is a shortage of 10 million houses in Pakistan. But there are now many projects coming up for the lower-end masses and now attraction is towards building such projects. Expatriates also believe that they should always have a second home there in Pakistan for future retirement and invest in such realty projects. Hence, there will be a strong demand for the real estate in the coming years in the realty setor," said Zeeshan Ali Khan, co-founder of Zameen.com, Pakistan's largest property portal.

Pakistani realty has yielded medium-term returns of up to 300 per cent in recent years due to rapid building investment interest by overseas Pakistanis and foreign investors alike, he added.

Khan was speaking on the sidelines of the two-day Pakistan Property Show held at the Dubai World Trade Centre, with over leading 50 property developers from Gwadar, Bahawalpur, Multan, Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi participating in the expo. The show witnessed a strong turnout of Pakistani nationals during, who visited to cash in on buying mid-to-high properties on sale during the event.

A.B. Abdul Aziz, a visitor, said he came to the expo with a friend in order to look for potential opportunities in both residential and commercial opportunities.

"Though there is a good representation of major developers from the all the major cities, I believe Karachi is under-represented and there should have been stronger participation of developers from commercial capital of Pakistani," he said.

Khan said overseas Pakistanis play a huge part in the country's $700 billion property market.

"Out of $19 billion [Dh69.73 billion] remittances sent every year, around $4.3 billion comes from the UAE and $5 billion from Saudi Arabia, making up around half of remittances from this region alone. Our analysis shows that around 20-25 per cent of these remittances go in to real estate investments," he noted.

Ejaz Mehmood Khan, head of sales and marketing at Al Jalil Developers, said property prices are increasing year-on-year and the trend will persist.

"The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is playing its influences on certain areas and cities which are connected to or closer to the route... prices have been going up and I don't see any prices going down in the near future," he said.

"There could be temporary slowdown but they will go up. Demand is there [and] prices are increasing because people want to build houses as soon as possible before prices get beyond their range again," Khan added.

Source: Khaleej Times