Who is buying Dubai’s villas, apartments?

Who is buying Dubai’s villas, apartments?

Sales transactions in Dubai's property market, which hit a serious setback when the world went into lockdown last year, have been breaking records over the last several months. In some development projects, off-plan residential units have been snapped up within several hours, while ready-to-occupy homes have also been selling at record speed. But who are these buyers, you ask? It might be a bit odd to see so many homes being sold when millions of people have lost jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic. Despite the down economy, many private individuals based here and abroad, can still afford to own a new property. And many of them have seized the opportunity of low prices and attractive loan-to-value (LTV) ratios, while others have been encouraged by the raft of government initiatives that seek to promote Dubai as an ideal place to live and work. "Anecdotal evidence suggest that the majority of property buyers are domestic, UAE citizens and residents, many of whom are first home buyers taking advantage of the historic low prices,“ said Haider Tuaima, head of real estate research at ValuStrat. Tuaima noted that sales transactions started to go up in the third quarter of 2019, but it was