Buyers 'eyeing spacious homes in city outskirts'
As accessibility to areas away from the city centre improves, Dubai’s property market is seeing a new trend in buyers opting for spacious homes in newer localities, according to leading real estate portal Property Finder.
With the majority of the city’s residents having experienced the restrictiveness of living indoors during the lockdown, the demand for larger, more spacious homes is rapidly increasing, it stated.
A multitude of new developments located on the periphery of the city’s epicentre promise unparalleled housing solutions with an enhanced community experience.
Re-evaluating housing preferences in a post-pandemic world, more and more residents are now in search of larger homes.
Since the start of the pandemic, the ratio of sales transactions for one-bedroom units has fallen by over 10% and for studios by more than 34%. The ratio of transactions for three, four and five-bedroom houses, however has increased by 9%, 20% and 15% respectively, stated Property Finder in its new report that sheds light on Dubai’s emerging new property hotspots.
There has been an increased interest in properties that sit further away from the city centres – areas such as Mira, Jumeirah Village Circle, Town Square and Dubailand are gaining popularity, owing to their ability to offer large homes at very competitive prices, stated the report.
Additionally, the introduction of new routes and with the UAE constantly upgrading its roadways, Dubai has seen a drop in traffic and a further reduction in commute times within the city.
Assuming three key city centres being Downtown Dubai, Dubai Media City and Old Dubai, the above four areas sit within a convenient drive of 20-40 minutes from each, according to Property Finder’s new ‘travel time calculator’, it added.
Given that one’s daily commute plays a crucial role in finding a new home, the newly launched feature allows people to gauge the estimated distance and travel time to their most frequently visited areas (be it workplaces, relative’s houses, children’s school, etc).
In terms of pricing, the asking rate for a 4 bedroom villa in Palm Jumeirah or Emirates Hills starts at AED5 million and AED7.5 million ($1.36 million and $2.4 million) respectively for sale, and AED220,000-255,000 yearly for rent.
In comparison, the prices for sale of a four-bedroom villa start at roughly AED1 to 2 million across Mira, Jumeirah Village Circle, Town Square and Dubai Land, with rents starting as low as AED70,000 to 100,000 for the same.
Committed to offering its customers a seamless real-estate journey, Property Finder launches two new features to further simply their search for a new home.
The ‘travel time calculator’ estimates the time and distance from a selected property to their frequently visited destinations. Each individual can enter three locations at any given time – the portal then saves these details and showcases travel time to-and-from for all future searches.
Additionally, a ‘map view’ tool, available for both purchase and rent searches, displays properties along the map of the city, highlighting the starting price for each area on the map.
Audiences can further streamline their search using this tool with additional filters that indicate the proximity