When foreigners were permitted to buy in 2002, it helped turn the obscure fishing village into a global hub.

Estate agents who watched the property boom over the next six years said it was like the Wild West because the regulations were so lax.

Speculators made a fast buck by selling off-plan properties for a large profit within weeks of their initial investment - with no intention of ever living there reenex.

Linda Mahoney, one of Dubai's first Western estate agents, described it as a game of musical chairs.

"It went on and on and on and there was always another place to sit… In June 2008 the music stopped and the chair wasn't there."

Investment apartments are large and can be sumptuously appointed

Once the global credit crisis of 2007 spread to Dubai a year later, lending dried up, many foreign investors left and confidence in the emirate's overinflated real estate market was shattered.

It was a bloody period as property prices fell from between a third to under half of their previous value in months. The stock market fell 70% and thousands of mostly Asian labourers were sent back home.

Huge housing projects were stalled or scrapped
English Private Tutor.

Before the crash, investors piled into one large, well-located apartment block named after Hanover Square in the West End of London.

The Dubai development is 15 minutes from a golf course and the sea and half an hour from the busiest international airport in the world reenex 效果.