Real estate activity ricocheted during the month of May 2024 with the number of sale transactions increasing by 32.05% month-on-month to 3,589 and the value of transactions concurrently improving by 40.22% to LBP 22.68 trillion. The average value per transaction rose by 6.19% month-on-month to LBP 6.32 billion ($70.60K at the LBP 89,500 exchange rate), from LBP 5.95 billion ($66.49K) a month earlier. On a cumulative basis, the number of real estate transactions reached 12,950 transactions in the first five months of 2024, in comparison with 2,554 transactions over the same period in 2023 with the value of transactions skyrocketing to LBP 75.39 trillion compared to LBP 3.28 trillion a year before. The rise in volume can be explained by the fact that real estate registries were closed due to public sector strikes during the most part of the Jan-May 2023 period, while only those of Metn and Baabda remained on strike up until May 2024. As for the increase in value of transactions, it can be mainly interpreted by the gradual increase in the Sayrafa rate (which is used by the real estate registry to compute the LBP value of the transactions) from around LBP 38,000/USD in January 2023 to LBP 43,622/USD in February, LBP 79,422/USD in March before reaching LBP 86,893/USD in April and LBP 86,300/USD in May of the same year compared to LBP 89,500/USD in the first five months of the current year. Finally, statistics reveal a growing foreigners’ appetite for the Lebanese real estate sector as foreigners’ share of sale transactions has increased to 2.25% up to May 2024 compared to 1.87% in 2023 and 1.04% in 2022.