I love travelling so discovering sleepy French villages, marvelling at Icelandic volcanos or driving off into the Australian outback is normally my kind of holiday. So this is why I just can’t understand my passion for Dubai which is full of new world extravagance and rather short on ancient ruins. Perhaps it’s the mystery of the desert or maybe it’s just that the skyline changes by the week and there’s that air of vibrancy, excitement and opportunity for the brave. Whatever it is, I can’t get the siren call of the souk out of my system!
My husband used to work in Dubai at the time the UK, Russia and Europe discovered the city as a hedonistic holiday playground and, having fallen in love at first sight, I’ve visited many times since. Dubai just keeps getting taller and The Palm, The Souk Madinat, The Burj Khalifa, the new tramway, the “Doob-Eye” and the superb Marina area are just part of the awesome architecture which has appeared between trips while the original Hard Rock Café, “Safestways” (I just love this shop name) and numerous roads have simply disappeared under the height of new and incredibly beautiful skyscrapers housing an incalculable number of apartments and smart hotels. And still they build…
On a recent trip I wanted to find out whether soon to be ex-pat friends, who I first met back in the Naughties, are thinking about going home yet. We all know that the cost of living is colossal in Dubai but, with a typical salary/bonus scheme and without tax to pay, it’s not difficult to live a privileged lifestyle there. However, when we talked about taxation in the UK it became apparent that maintaining this lifestyle might mean a rethink on location – and that value for money will have to be a consideration when buying property here.
I suspect most expats from Dubai will return home at a fairly early retirement age partly because residency rights are usually attached to their jobs and, having already educated their children, they are no longer tied to the traditional schooling and city commutes. Therefore their location options are wide and, having left behind fabulous weather and a super-close community of friends, pretty villages or small towns with good amenities (particularly pubs and restaurants, gyms and reasonable access to airports and the coast) will be on many property wishlists.
How do my friends intend to search out that property? Naively perhaps, they expect to find it quickly – probably in one trip back home. The current shortage of property in the UK, competitive bidding and disappointed underbidders can be hard to comprehend in a city full of building sites and cranes. These buyers wouldn’t think of thumbing through glossy property magazines but are addicted to Rightmove and may rely on their families to do the groundwork for them.
I wonder if my friends are typical? In Dubai and The Gulf in general there is no over-riding pressure to return at the moment, unlike Hong Kong and in the short term Singapore. They believe it will be easy to find the perfect house and it’s very hard to explain the harsh realities of the current market in the UK and particularly the competition to secure the right house. Perhaps by the time they return supply and demand will have found a different equilibrium or there’s a chance they might decide that professional help would be an advantage.
In the Middle East, fortunetellers produce tarot cards from red boxes and read coffee grounds to predict the future – maybe that’s as good a way as any to read the property market over the next year or so!
