Dubai’s luxurious Business Bay attracts wealthy Indian buyers

Rich Indians, especially business owners, and entrepreneurs, are swarming to Dubai’s chic financial neighborhood, Business Bay, to buy opulent houses. Indian real estate sales in the city brought in $2.24 billion in 2022, more than doubling the earnings in 2021. 40% of the buyers were from India, mostly from the Delhi-NCR, Ahmedabad, Surat, Hyderabad, and Punjab. The remainders were either international Indians headquartered elsewhere or Indians residing in the UAE. These affluent Indians are drawn to Dubai because of its alluring characteristics, including its first-rate social infrastructure, foreign schools, and expanding Indian population. Young Indian entrepreneurs are drawn to the city in large part because of the fintech ecosystem that the Dubai International Financial Centre provides.

The average price of a home owned by an Indian is between $440,000 and $480,000, yet the average monthly rent is between $4,160 and $4,800. Real estate professionals in Dubai assert that, like in Mumbai, the average rental income from properties ranges from 4% to 5%. The Golden Visa program helped Dubai’s real estate market even more when it was enlarged in 2022 to include more workers, skilled professionals, scientists, and researchers. With the help of the program, talented foreigners can live, work, or study in the UAE and take advantage of special perks.

Rahul Bhattad, an entrepreneur who relocated to Dubai from Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh, claims that his children are happy there since the city is quite safe and the schools there offer an Indian curriculum, which is among the best in the world. Bhattad adds that his parents had gotten used to the sparkle and glamour of the modern city. The Covid-19 outbreak caused a 30% decline in Dubai’s rental market, but it has now recovered to levels last seen during the city’s real estate high in 2015–16. There have been more launches of apartment and villa projects in the city as a result of the rise in demand from foreign homeowners.
Dubai’s increasing appeal to affluent Indians, fueled by the city’s opulent lifestyle, first-rate social infrastructure, and developing fintech sector, has cemented the area’s reputation as a top location for luxury residential properties.