Real estate activity slowed during the month of July 2024 with the number of sale transactions dropping by 3.98% month-on-month to 3,303 and the value of transactions concurrently slowing by 10.83% to LBP 20.72 trillion. Subsequently, the average value per transaction contracted by 7.13% month-on-month to LBP 6.27 billion ($70.08K at the LBP 89,500 exchange rate), from LBP 6.75 billion ($75.47K) a month earlier. On a cumulative basis, the number of real estate transactions reached 19,693 transactions in the first seven months of the year 2024, in comparison with 5,154 transactions over the same period in 2023 with the value of transactions skyrocketing to LBP 119.34 trillion compared to LBP 19.37 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-July 2023 period, while none of the registries remained on strike up until July 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) which rose from LBP 38,000/USD at end of January 2023 to reach a peak of LBP 86,700/USD in April before dropping LBP 85,500/USD at end of July of the same year compared to applying the official exchange rate of LBP 89,500/USD since the beginning of the current year up until the concerned month of July. Finally, statistics reveal a growing foreigners’ appetite for the Lebanese real estate sector as foreigners’ share of sale transactions has increased to 2.26% in the first seven months of 2024 compared to 1.87% in the full year 2023 and 1.04% in the full year 2022.