Dubai, UAE – Sky Mansions and New Prime Locations
If the booming branded residences sphere – where famous luxury brands team up with high-end developers on serviced apartment schemes – has a natural home, then it is Dubai.
From expansive malls and the world’s tallest buildings to historical districts. Dubai’s architecture is a dreamlike fusion of the old and new.
The Emirate that has never shied away from building bigger, better and blingier than everyone else is having a field day with its latest batch of branded towers, such as Bugatti Residences, the car marque’s first residential scheme anywhere in the world. And it is clearly hitting the spot with wealthy buyers.
Housing Market Overview
Off plan sales in this slinky, sinuous tower in Business Bay – where prices start at AED19m ($5.2m) and the ‘sky mansion’ penthouses come with car lifts to transport owners’ prized wheels to their residences – have achieved the highest price per square foot for Dubai of AED9,674 ($2,630). That’s more than three times the Emirate’s prime average capital value.
Meanwhile, in Dubai Marina, Aeternitas, the world’s tallest residential clock tower – a niche that even the most wizened property experts might have struggled to identify – comes branded by luxury watchmaker Franck Muller. Horologists may not be famed for their experience in high-end hospitality, but Dubai is adept at offering superlative service. What’s more, with apartments priced from AED2.1m ($572,000), just over the threshold for golden visa applications, buyers can become long-term residents.
Firas Al Msaddi
CEO of Fam Properties
Dubai’s real estate has thrived, leveraging its status as a global safe haven. Looking into 2024, the market is shaped by trends like sustainability, with an increase in green properties; affordable housing, through government and developer initiatives; the rise of smart homes enhancing living quality; and a focus on wellness- centric communities for healthier lifestyles.
Dubai is no stranger to property booms. It also did bust quite spectacularly in 2008, when it had to rely on neighbouring oil-rich Abu Dhabi to bail it out to the tune of $20bn. But this boomtown’s stats are headline- worthy once again. New launches were up by 90% in 2023 – a year that Savills describes as “the best on record” for the number of residential property sales, up by 29% on an already stellar 2022.
There was also a record number of $10m+ property sales last year – 431, to be precise, nearly double the previous year’s total, according to Knight Frank. Most of these super-rich buyers came from the UK and India, though Dubai’s reputation as a financial safe haven casts its net wide, including to UHNW investors from Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey.
Average Listing Price in Prime Locations
We have seen this all before, so what – buyers will want to know – is different this time? This year’s prime house price forecasts are resolutely in the black, too, with Savills forecasting 4-6% growth while most global cities are looking fairly flat, so it’s a bubble that doesn’t look set to burst just yet.
The buyer profile is shifting. Investors are still major players in the off-plan arena, with areas such as Dubai Hills and Emaar Beachfront (a new manmade island in Dubai Harbour, with 16 residential towers lining a private beach) popular among those who may well flip before completion in a couple of years.
Most of Dubai’s cranes are currently to be found, too, outside the city centre in new communities such as Jumeirah Village Circle (JVC) and Sports City, where apartments have elite cricket, rugby, football and golf facilities on the doorstep.
But foreign buyers with longer-term ambitions for their time in the Emirate is seeing increasing demand for inland communities, given most of Dubai’s 65km coastline has been built out, point s out Faisal Durrani, Knight Frank’s head of research for the Middle East and North Africa.
“Locations such as Al Barari, Al Ghaf, Jumeirah Islands and Jumeirah Golf Estates are already on our watchlist to be upgraded to prime status,” Durrani comments. Popular in such communities are freehold, golf-front villas – which can cost up to AED30m ($8.2m) for a large six-bedroom property on Jumeirah Golf Estates, where prices rose by 30% last year, Smith reports, though the entry price for a three-bed townhouse is around AED2m ($545,000).
Dubai: Average Listing Price in Prime Locations
| Business Bay | $1,202,000 |
| Downtown Dubai | $1,282,000 |
| Dubai Canal | $1,241,000 |
| Emaar Beachfront | $1,291,000 |
| Jumeirah Golf Estates | $2,571,000 |
| Jumeirah Islands | $6,234,000 |
| Jumeirah Village Circle | $685,000 |
| The Palm Jumeirah | $3,898,000 |
Dubai’s Tax Haven
Low tax (zero income and capital gains tax, and 5% VAT) and guaranteed sun remain Dubai’s eternal draws for relocating foreigners. There is emerging demand too, adds Smith, for holiday homes that buyers will use for two or three months during Northern European and British winters, when temperatures in Dubai are in their mid-20s.
After its time in the doldrums, Dubai is defiantly on the up again in more ways than one. Let’s see, however, if the 2027 completion of its record-breaking residential clock tower – along with the handover of a huge number of other new properties – chimes when the market is still in full swing or calls time on the boom.