Why Indians should not compare Dubai property to Indian property
Same instincts, wrong market. The habits that protect you in Gurgaon actively cost you money in Dubai.
Indian property buying is built on a set of instincts that are largely correct, for India. Land holds value. Location is permanent. You buy and you hold, often for a generation. Nobody sells the house.
Those instincts are not transferable, and applying them to Dubai produces predictable, expensive mistakes.
Land versus building
In India, a substantial share of what you buy is land, and land is finite. In Dubai, you are overwhelmingly buying a building on leasehold or freehold plots where supply is a policy decision, not a natural constraint. New towers can and do appear next to yours. The scarcity that protects an Indian asset often simply does not exist.
Holding period
The Indian default is indefinite. The Dubai market rewards buyers who decide their holding period before they buy, because market cycles there are shorter and more pronounced. A property bought at the top of a cycle with no exit plan can take years to recover its entry price, which is survivable if you planned for it and painful if you did not.
Rental yield means something different
Indian residential yields are famously low; nobody buys a Gurgaon flat for the rent. Dubai yields are genuinely attractive on paper, which draws Indian buyers who are not used to evaluating them, and who therefore do not deduct service charges, void periods, agency fees and maintenance before comparing. The gross figure on the brochure and the number that reaches your account are meaningfully different.
Transaction speed
Selling a Gurgaon property can take months and involves a small circle of buyers. Dubai is faster and more liquid, but liquidity is concentrated in certain unit types and areas, and absent in others. Assuming uniform liquidity because the market as a whole is liquid is a specific and costly error.
What to carry across, and what to leave behind
Carry across your scepticism, your insistence on documentation and your unwillingness to be rushed. Those serve you in any market. Leave behind the assumption that time alone fixes a bad entry, that land value provides a floor, and that a good building is the same thing as a good investment.