Chandra and Sujatha Dake bought their home after property prices dropped during the pandemic. Chris Whiteoak / The National
Chandra and Sujatha Dake bought their home after property prices dropped during the pandemic. Chris Whiteoak / The National
Chandra and Sujatha Dake bought their home after property prices dropped during the pandemic. Chris Whiteoak / The National
Chandra and Sujatha Dake bought their home after property prices dropped during the pandemic. Chris Whiteoak / The National

First-time buyers snap up properties in Dubai after pandemic drives prices down


Patrick Ryan
  • English
  • Arabic

Savvy Dubai residents are taking advantage of falling property prices caused by the Covid-19 pandemic to buy their first homes in the emirate.

The National spoke to first-time buyers who benefited from the unexpected opportunity to put down roots in Dubai.

Property prices were 8 per cent lower year-on-year in Dubai and 4 per cent lower in Abu Dhabi during the fourth quarter of 2020, in part because of the wide-ranging economic effects of coronavirus.

It turned out that having a mortgage and renting a property would end up costing me around the same anyway

“I was initially thinking of upgrading by renting a bigger apartment than the one I was living in but then the pandemic happened,” said Australian Tariq Rao, 51.

“When I saw how the property market was going I thought I might be able to get a villa.

"It turned out that having a mortgage and renting a property would end up costing me about the same anyway."

In November, Mr Rao and his family bought a three-bedroom townhouse in Dubai's Town Square community for Dh1.3 million, a price he said was too good to refuse, given that similar properties were selling at Dh1.5 million just a few months previously.

'It took me eight years to buy a property in Dubai," said Mr Rao, who works in the cultural section of the British Council.

“I just never trusted the market enough before and didn’t feel confident enough to invest until the prices came down with the pandemic.”

Property experts predicted there would be more bargains in Dubai in the coming months with prices expected to fall further.

Property surplus a boost for bargain hunters

Analysts at property company JLL said an oversupply in residential units had put downward pressure on the market, which would create a decline of between 5 per cent and 8 per cent to eight per cent.

JLL forecast that 53,000 new builds would be added to Dubai’s property market in 2021, representing a 9 per cent increase on the 595,000 properties registered at the end of 2020.

Another Dubai resident said the lower property prices provided the ideal opportunity for him, and his family, to buy their own home.

“We were living here for six years before we decided to take the plunge,” said corporate lawyer Chris Walters, 36.

‘We had been toying with the idea for some time and have often had issues with landlords we were renting from, so when the property prices dropped it felt like a good time to make a home for ourselves in the UAE.”

Mr Walters, from Scotland, has just bought a villa in the Springs, Dubai, for Dh2.4 million, but has already noticed neighbouring properties being sold for as much as Dh3 million.

‘It’s already looking like a wise investment,” Mr Walters said.

“We saw that prices had dropped [at the start of the pandemic] but had started to creep back up already and we didn’t want to miss out just as the market turned.”

Chandra and Sujatha Dake at their villa in Al Furjan, Dubai with nephew Panav 11. Chris Whiteoak / The National
Chandra and Sujatha Dake at their villa in Al Furjan, Dubai with nephew Panav 11. Chris Whiteoak / The National

Chandra Dake, 42, from India, believed he had secured a bargain when he bought a five-bedroom villa in Al Furjan, Dubai, for Dh3.9 million.

“I saved about 20 per cent to 30 per cent by buying it when I did,” said Mr Dake, who runs a desert farming company.

“We wouldn’t get value for money like this in any other country.”

Mr Dake said the property would have been even cheaper if he and his wife had bought it in the early months of the pandemic, instead of October.

“We wanted to see if the market would begin to pull back and if prices were going back up before we invested,” he said.

“We were confident the lowest dip had already happened and it wouldn’t drop any more and that we had chosen the right time to pick up the property.”

Mr Dake said he had rented a villa in Dubai since 2018 and had been monitoring the market for the perfect moment to buy his first property in the emirate.

Dubai's hot spots for buyers

The top five areas in Dubai in terms of property sales in 2020 were Dubai Marina and Jumeirah Beach Residences, Jumeirah Village Circle, Town Square, Downtown Dubai and Business Bay, according to an annual report from Core Middle East.

Gil Van Gelder, director of sales at Espace Real Estate, said the pandemic had helped make properties more affordable to first time buyers in Dubai. Courtesy: Espace Real Estate
Gil Van Gelder, director of sales at Espace Real Estate, said the pandemic had helped make properties more affordable to first time buyers in Dubai. Courtesy: Espace Real Estate

Gil Van Gelder, sales director with Dubai real estate company Espace, said demand was especially high among first-time buyers in The Springs, The Meadows and The Lakes.

He said this was because residents were putting a premium on space and their surroundings as they spent significantly longer at home because of remote working and travel restrictions.

“Most of the people purchasing property right now are first-time buyers,” he said.

“A lot of people who had been renting for years saw the opportunity to buy and took it.”

He said incentives from the Central Bank of the UAE had played a significant role in allowing first-time buyers to get their feet on the property ladder.

“Since the pandemic, first-time buyers are able to borrow up to 85 per cent of the capital required when before that it was capped at 75 per cent,” Mr Van Gelder said.

It was not just first-time buyers who were snapping up deals during the pandemic, with investors picking up relative bargains in some of Dubai’s most illustrious locations.

"One investor bought a villa in Palm Jumeirah for Dh10 million in April that had been valued at Dh25 million before the pandemic," Mr Van Gelder said.

“He sold it for Dh15.6 million a few months later and the person who bought it from him then sold it for Dh16.8 million.

“Now its value is back up to Dh25 million.”

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2025 Fifa Club World Cup groups

Group A: Palmeiras, Porto, Al Ahly, Inter Miami.

Group B: Paris Saint-Germain, Atletico Madrid, Botafogo, Seattle.

Group C: Bayern Munich, Auckland City, Boca Juniors, Benfica.

Group D: Flamengo, ES Tunis, Chelsea, Leon.

Group E: River Plate, Urawa, Monterrey, Inter Milan.

Group F: Fluminense, Borussia Dortmund, Ulsan, Mamelodi Sundowns.

Group G: Manchester City, Wydad, Al Ain, Juventus.

Group H: Real Madrid, Al Hilal, Pachuca, Salzburg.

Sole survivors
  • Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
  • George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
  • Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
  • Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
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Review: Tomb Raider
Dir: Roar Uthaug
Starring: Alicia Vikander, Dominic West, Daniel Wu, Walter Goggins
​​​​​​​two stars

How to watch Ireland v Pakistan in UAE

When: The one-off Test starts on Friday, May 11
What time: Each day’s play is scheduled to start at 2pm UAE time.
TV: The match will be broadcast on OSN Sports Cricket HD. Subscribers to the channel can also stream the action live on OSN Play.

Founders: Ines Mena, Claudia Ribas, Simona Agolini, Nourhan Hassan and Therese Hundt

Date started: January 2017, app launched November 2017

Based: Dubai, UAE

Sector: Private/Retail/Leisure

Number of Employees: 18 employees, including full-time and flexible workers

Funding stage and size: Seed round completed Q4 2019 - $1m raised

Funders: Oman Technology Fund, 500 Startups, Vision Ventures, Seedstars, Mindshift Capital, Delta Partners Ventures, with support from the OQAL Angel Investor Network and UAE Business Angels

UK-EU trade at a glance

EU fishing vessels guaranteed access to UK waters for 12 years

Co-operation on security initiatives and procurement of defence products

Youth experience scheme to work, study or volunteer in UK and EU countries

Smoother border management with use of e-gates

Cutting red tape on import and export of food

Dust and sand storms compared

Sand storm

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  • Travel distance: Long-range, up to thousands of kilometres
  • Source: Can be carried from distant regions
MOUNTAINHEAD REVIEW

Starring: Ramy Youssef, Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman

Director: Jesse Armstrong

Rating: 3.5/5

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Fuel economy, combined: 13.8L/100km
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Analysis

Maros Sefcovic is juggling multiple international trade agreement files, but his message was clear when he spoke to The National on Wednesday.

The EU-UAE bilateral trade deal will be finalised soon, he said. It is in everyone’s interests to do so. Both sides want to move quickly and are in alignment. He said the UAE is a very important partner for the EU. It’s full speed ahead - and with some lofty ambitions - on the road to a free trade agreement. 

We also talked about US-EU tariffs. He answered that both sides need to talk more and more often, but he is prepared to defend Europe's position and said diplomacy should be a guiding principle through the current moment. 

 

Results

United States beat UAE by three wickets

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Scotland beat United States by four wickets

Fixtures

Sunday, 10am, ICC Academy, Dubai - UAE v Scotland

Admission is free

Six large-scale objects on show
  • Concrete wall and windows from the now demolished Robin Hood Gardens housing estate in Poplar
  • The 17th Century Agra Colonnade, from the bathhouse of the fort of Agra in India
  • A stagecloth for The Ballet Russes that is 10m high – the largest Picasso in the world
  • Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1930s Kaufmann Office
  • A full-scale Frankfurt Kitchen designed by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, which transformed kitchen design in the 20th century
  • Torrijos Palace dome
Where to submit a sample

Volunteers of all ages can submit DNA samples at centres across Abu Dhabi, including: Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (Adnec), Biogenix Labs in Masdar City, NMC Royal Hospital in Khalifa City, NMC Royal Medical Centre, Abu Dhabi, NMC Royal Women's Hospital, Bareen International Hospital, Al Towayya in Al Ain, NMC Specialty Hospital, Al Ain

The specs

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Company profile

Name: Infinite8

Based: Dubai

Launch year: 2017

Number of employees: 90

Sector: Online gaming industry

Funding: $1.2m from a UAE angel investor

Profile of Tamatem

Date started: March 2013

Founder: Hussam Hammo

Based: Amman, Jordan

Employees: 55

Funding: $6m

Funders: Wamda Capital, Modern Electronics (part of Al Falaisah Group) and North Base Media

Anxiety and work stress major factors

Anxiety, work stress and social isolation are all factors in the recogised rise in mental health problems.

A study UAE Ministry of Health researchers published in the summer also cited struggles with weight and illnesses as major contributors.

Its authors analysed a dozen separate UAE studies between 2007 and 2017. Prevalence was often higher in university students, women and in people on low incomes.

One showed 28 per cent of female students at a Dubai university reported symptoms linked to depression. Another in Al Ain found 22.2 per cent of students had depressive symptoms - five times the global average.

It said the country has made strides to address mental health problems but said: “Our review highlights the overall prevalence of depressive symptoms and depression, which may long have been overlooked."

Prof Samir Al Adawi, of the department of behavioural medicine at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman, who was not involved in the study but is a recognised expert in the Gulf, said how mental health is discussed varies significantly between cultures and nationalities.

“The problem we have in the Gulf is the cross-cultural differences and how people articulate emotional distress," said Prof Al Adawi. 

“Someone will say that I have physical complaints rather than emotional complaints. This is the major problem with any discussion around depression."

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UPI facts

More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions

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Electoral College Victory

Trump has so far secured 295 Electoral College votes, according to the Associated Press, exceeding the 270 needed to win. Only Nevada and Arizona remain to be called, and both swing states are leaning Republican. Trump swept all five remaining swing states, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, sealing his path to victory and giving him a strong mandate. 

 

Popular Vote Tally

The count is ongoing, but Trump currently leads with nearly 51 per cent of the popular vote to Harris’s 47.6 per cent. Trump has over 72.2 million votes, while Harris trails with approximately 67.4 million.

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1.5 stars

The specs

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Power: 712hp at 6,100rpm

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Transmission: 8-speed auto

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Price: Dh380,000

On sale: now 

MATCH INFO

Serie A

Juventus v Fiorentina, Saturday, 8pm (UAE)

Match is on BeIN Sports