In common with the region's capital markets, land has proved to be a firm favourite with Gulf investors in recent years, and the property markets of the GCC have expanded by leaps and bounds with each fresh surge of liquidity in the local economy. Regional per capita income has grown at a three-year compound annual growth rate of 5.5 per cent since 2001, according to Kuwait's Global Investment House (GIH), and that money has been looking for a home. In hot spots such as Dubai Marina or the Jeddah Corniche, apartments are changing hands many times over before they are even built, let alone occupied. In the shopping malls of Riyadh and the UAE, where developers have set up their stalls alongside more traditional retailers, it can prove almost as easy to put down a deposit on a house on a prime piece of real estate as it is to buy your daily groceries (see pages 32-34).

Inevitably, however, there have been creeping concerns about the extent to which speculation is keeping the market artificially inflated. Even up-and-coming developers such as Dubai-based Damac foresee some softening of sentiment, with property demand expected to drop by as much as 15 per cent by the end of 2006 (see pages 40-42).

But while there may be some surprises in the medium term, demand forecasts would seem to indicate that GCC property will prove to be a reliable long-term investment. Irrespective of the behaviour of the oil markets and economies, the total population of the GCC - standing at about 36.2 million at the end of last year - is estimated to have grown by an average of 3.8 per cent a year since 2001, accelerating to about 4 per cent in 2004. About 20 per cent of the total population is under the age of 15, while as many as 40 per cent of GCC nationals are minors. It is this baby boom generation that will be living in the towers now under development along the Gulf coast.

Mortgage and land ownership laws are evolving rapidly as a result of the boom (see pages 32-33). But the true test of the property market will come when it reaches maturity - when the sea-view skyscrapers and luxury apartment blocks are completed and are waiting to be filled.