In the UAE’s richest city-state of Dubai, house prices are set to fall further in 2015, an annual report from a major financial pricing firm has revealed.

According to the London-based Cluttons Spring 2015 Dubai Residential Market Outlook, home prices in Dubai slipped almost 1 percent in the first fiscal quarter of this year. Average prices were down 0.5 percent from 2014, the report stated.

“The upward creep of project completions, coupled with the slow motion impact of new real estate regulations and the general dent to sentiment as a result of the slowing rate of house price growth, in a sentiment-driven market has weighed heavily on the emirates residential market,” the report said.

Expensive big houses or villas are expected to be impacted the most, the outlook added.

What’s worrying about the recent report is that this is the the second time, since last year, that prices have started to fall almost a decade after 2008.

In the past few years, the government has been adopting policies for the housing market in Dubai so that it won’t shed anymore of its value.

During the 2007-2008 international financial crisis, real estate prices in Dubai and the rest of the United Arab Emirates dropped more than 60 percent in some cases.

Prices stabled after the government inserted billions of dollars into the economy.

The ratings agency Standard & Poor’s, in a report last year, said prices would fall 20 percent because of increased supply and weakening investor sentiment.

The report linked the decline to the direct impact of the oil price crash that the UAE’s neighbor and ally Saudi Arabia is allegedly behind.

Oil prices have recovered after plunging 60 percent which has hurt many economies.

HDS/HB