Off plan in Dubai: the payment plan is the product, not the flat
I moved from Valencia to Dubai four years ago for work in events, and last year I bought off plan for the first time. Writing down what I misunderstood, because in Spain I had only ever bought something that already existed.
My mistake was that I compared flats. Here you are also comparing payment plans, and they differ far more than the flats do.
Some plans are tied to construction milestones, so you pay when the building actually reaches a stage. Others are tied to the calendar, so you pay on a date whether or not anything has been built. Those are two completely different risks, and they are presented in the same brochure with the same friendly percentages.
Post handover plans sound generous. Paying part of it over two or three years after you get the keys is genuinely useful. But read what happens if you want to sell before you have finished paying. Often you cannot, or you need the developer's permission and a fee.
Handover dates move. Everyone told me this and I still budgeted as if mine would not. Have a plan for six months of rent you were not expecting to pay.
And ask for the service charge of the building before you sign, not after. It is not in the brochure and it is the number you live with every year afterwards.
I kept a folder of listings from https://middle-east.realestate/es/ while I was deciding, mostly to compare the same unit type across different developers instead of looking at one project at a time.
If anyone here has bought off plan in the Gulf and had a handover delay, how did you handle the rent gap?