Expo City Dubai

Daily life here is unusually pedestrian for Dubai. The site was designed for people arriving on foot and staying on foot, with shade, wide walkways and a Metro station built into it, so the ordinary Dubai routine of driving between two air-conditioned car parks is not the only option.

What it lacks is population. Restaurants, shops and services are still catching up with a district built for event crowds, so evenings are quiet and choice is limited compared with an established community. The buildings are new, the management is single-handed and the standards are high, but you should expect a service charge that reflects an extensively landscaped, heavily engineered public realm rather than a simple residential block.

The early buyer profile here is different from the rest of southern Dubai. It skews towards European, British and Emirati buyers who respond to the architecture and the sustainability story, alongside investors from the Gulf and the former Soviet states buying units on payment plans against the airport expansion next door.

Rental demand is thin today and will stay that way until the resident population and the retail offer catch up with each other. Resale liquidity is limited by the same thing: there is not yet a deep register of comparable sales to argue a valuation from, so pricing is set largely by what the master developer is asking for the next building.