VirmaniViewsEverything I have written.
Mostly the UAE property market. Occasionally the city and the family business. Every topic and opinion is mine, the typing is shared with Claude, and I will defend any of it over coffee.
Offices are the scarce asset
Dubai is building homes by the hundred thousand and offices by the hectare. Prime vacancy is under one percent. The quiet side of the market, in four charts.
How a key actually arrives
Between your deposit and your front door sit an escrow bank, an independent engineer, a regulator and a snagging list. The handover machine, drawn out.
Two Palms
Palm Jebel Ali is twice the size of the original, 60 percent cheaper per square foot, and eighteen months from its first keys. What the first Palm’s twenty years say about buying into the second.
Thirty-two trillion
D33 is Dubai’s ten-year economic plan. Strip the announcement, and it is a forecast of how many people will need a desk and a bed. Read it that way.
AED 286 billion in six months
AED 286 billion of property changed hands in six months. The number is huge. The shape of it matters more.
Dubai is moving its front door
A $35 billion airport, a million-resident city around it, and what that does to a property map. The corridor matters more than the runway.
760 new neighbours a day
Dubai passed 4.74 million people this summer. Where they sleep is the whole rental market, explained in one arithmetic.
The 2027 wave
More homes are scheduled for handover in 2027 than in any year in Dubai’s history. Glut or opportunity depends on one habit the market has never broken.
Seven percent is gross
Dubai yields are double London’s. That is true, and it is not the number you will actually earn. Here is the walk from gross to net.
Five hundred ten-million-dollar homes
Dubai sold more homes above $10 million last year than any city on earth, and is on pace to beat it. Why the top of the market is now the story.
One in seven
One in every seven branded residences in the world is in Dubai. What the badge on the door is worth, and when it is not.
The AED 2 million line
A ten-year visa sits behind one number. Here is how that number bends prices, and what changed in February.
19.59 million guests
A record year of visitors, four in five hotel beds full, and what that does to a spare bedroom in Marina.
The holiday-home test
Short lets can beat a lease by a third to a half, or lose to it. One occupancy number decides which, and most owners never calculate it.
Fourteen stations
The Blue Line opens in 2029. What a metro station has done to prices everywhere else, and where it will do it here.
A trillion by 2033
Dubai has published its property targets for the next seven years. Read them as a buyer, not a headline.
Two hundred passports
Buyers from more than 200 countries, and three of them set the tone. Who is buying, and why the mix protects you.
Villas up, apartments down
For the first time since 2021 the two halves of the market are moving in opposite directions. The index that shows it, and why.
Twenty minutes north
Sharjah sold AED 65 billion of property last year, up 64 percent. The commuter emirate is becoming a market of its own.
One good email, now and then.
No content calendar and no growth hacks. A letter arrives when I have something worth your attention, and not before.
- 1One market note. What is actually moving in UAE property, and why.
- 2One honest take. The call I would make with my own money.
- 3One thing worth keeping. A book, a walk, a number.
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