Real estate activity showed mixed results during the month of June 2024 with the number of sale transactions dropping by 4.15% month-on-month to 3,440 and the value of transactions concurrently improving by 2.46% to LBP 23.24 trillion. Subsequently, the average value per transaction rose by 6.90% month-on-month to LBP 6.75 billion ($75.47K at the LBP 89,500 exchange rate), from LBP 6.32 billion ($70.60K) a month earlier. On a cumulative basis, the number of real estate transactions reached 16,390 transactions in the first half of the year 2024, in comparison with 3,425 transactions over the same period in 2023 with the value of transactions skyrocketing to LBP 98.62 trillion compared to LBP 10.55 trillion a year before. The rise in the number of transactions can be explained by the fact that real estate registries were closed due to public sector strikes during the most part of the Jan-June 2023 period, while none of the registries remained on strike up until June 2024 (registries are either processing new transactions, or still processing old ones such as Metn, Baabda, Chouf and Aley). 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 at end of January 2023 to LBP 45,400/USD at end of February, LBP 60,000/USD at end of March, LBP 86,700/USD end of April, LBP 86,300/USD at end of May before reaching LBP 86,200/USD at end of June and of the same year compared to the official exchange rate of LBP 89,500/USD in the first half 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 2.27% in the first half of 2024 compared to 1.87% in the full year 2023 and 1.04% in the full year 2022.