Nakheel PJSC is considering the sale of its district cooling assets, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as real estate companies in the United Arab Emirates offload non-core activities amid the coronavirus downturn. Nakheel has hired financial advisory Synergy Consulting to manage the process, said two of the sources who declined to be named as the matter was not public. Nakheel declined to comment and Synergy did not respond to a request for comment. Nakheel’s planned sale comes after Dubai’s real estate sector, sluggish for most of the past decade, took a further hit from the COVID-19 pandemic, which led many foreign workers to leave and exacerbated oversupply problems. National Central Cooling Company PJSC (DFM:TABREED) and Emirates Central Cooling Systems Corporation (Empower) have expressed interest in Nakheel’s deal, the sources said. The two companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.