Dubai

Buying in Dubai: what every page here assumes

Dubai is one of the few major cities where a foreign national can own a home outright. Freehold ownership in the designated areas has been open to all nationalities since Dubai's Law No. 7 of 2006, the title deed is issued by the Dubai Land Department in your own name, and you do not need to live in the UAE, hold a residence visa or use a local partner to buy. Prices are in dirhams, the dirham has been pegged to the US dollar at 3.6725 since 1997, and there is no annual property tax. The Land Department recorded AED 252 billion of real estate transactions in the first quarter of 2026 alone, up 31% on the year, and the buyers behind those numbers come from more than a hundred countries.

This section carries every Dubai project Realty Hunting tracks, from studios in Jumeirah Village Circle under AED 700,000 to villas on Palm Jumeirah and in Dubai Hills Estate. Each page prints the same things, so you can compare projects instead of marketing: the developer and the community, the starting price in AED with the US dollar and Indian rupee figures beside it, the configurations and sizes actually on offer, the payment plan the developer publishes, the handover date on record, the DLD or RERA status, and a straight answer on who should not buy the project. Where sources disagree on a price or a handover date, the page prints the disagreement rather than smoothing it over.

Budget about 6% to 7% above the purchase price for the costs a first-time overseas buyer tends to miss: the 4% Dubai Land Department transfer fee, roughly AED 4,200 in registration and trustee charges, AED 40 to register an off-plan contract on Oqood or about AED 580 for a title deed on a ready unit, an agency fee of about 2%, and the annual service charge, which is quoted per square foot and runs from single digits in the outer communities to AED 15 to 25 in Downtown and Business Bay. That service charge, not tax, is the recurring cost of holding Dubai property.

Two rules decide what most overseas buyers can do here. A property valued at AED 2 million or more by the Land Department qualifies the owner for the renewable ten-year Golden Visa, and since a federal circular in February 2026 off-plan and mortgaged units in Dubai count towards it on certified valuation. Finance is tighter: banks lend non-residents roughly 50% to 60% of the price, so plan on 40% to 50% in cash plus the fees above, or use a developer payment plan, which is why 60/40 and 70/30 off-plan plans are the usual route in.

Off-plan money in Dubai is paid into a project escrow account and the contract is registered with the Land Department; check any project's registration and construction percentage on the Dubai REST app before you transfer a booking amount. Prices move quickly and developers release inventory in phases, so treat every starting price here as the figure on the day it was listed, and confirm the current one with us before you pay. Every project on this page is also on the full projects list, and the buying rules — fees, freehold, the Golden Visa, mortgages and yields by community — are worked through in our guide to buying property in Dubai.