In the current Dubai housing market, what’s obvious is that home buyers need to wait longer for their investments to pay off than they would have before the pandemic. This is not only due to prices having risen, but because of the cost of mortgages spiking. While rents have risen, home prices have risen much more, especially villas.

The increased cost to buy a home means that the time it takes to breakeven compared to what one would have to pay to rent a comparable home has gotten longer. (The analysis assumes that the breakeven point is when the estimated net costs of having owned the home match the estimated costs of having rented the same home over the same period).