Freehold vs leasehold in Dubai is the first structural question every foreign buyer needs answered correctly, before location, price or developer even enter the conversation — because it determines whether you actually own the property you are about to pay for. Dubai's real estate market is often described, correctly, as one of the most open in the world to foreign ownership. What gets lost in that...
Service charges in Oman real estate are the recurring cost most foreign buyers forget to model. Most run the same mental math when evaluating a purchase: purchase price, expected rent, divide one by the other, arrive at a yield, decide whether the number is good enough. It is a reasonable starting point, and it is also incomplete in a way that quietly erodes returns for investors who never correct for it....
Ask most foreign investors to name an Omani city and they will say Muscat or, if they have done a little more research, Salalah — the two markets that dominate almost every guide, brochure and portfolio pitch built around Oman real estate. Sohar rarely makes the list — and that gap is precisely what makes it worth understanding. Sohar is Oman's largest port and industrial complex, a genuine economic...
Property investors have learned to watch for one signal above almost any other before a district re-rates, and to treat it as more reliable than almost any marketing brochure or growth forecast: the arrival of mass transit. Metro lines have reshaped property values from Dubai to Doha to Riyadh, and Oman is now working through the same playbook. The Muscat Metro — still in its detailed planning and study...
Most conversations about Oman real estate start and end with Muscat and Salalah, and for good reason — they are the country's two largest, most liquid property markets. But tucked away at the northern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, separated from the rest of Oman by a strip of UAE territory, sits a governorate that barely registers in most investors' searches: Musandam. Known to sailors and geographers as...
Inheritance for foreign property owners in Dubai works very differently from what most buyers assume, and the difference matters far more than in most markets. Unlike some jurisdictions where courts simply have discretion over how a foreigner's estate is handled, Dubai's default position is explicit: without a registered will, UAE courts apply Sharia inheritance rules to your Dubai property, regardless of...
Inheritance for foreign property owners in Oman is one of the most overlooked parts of buying real estate in the Sultanate, and one of the most important. Foreign buyers routinely research freehold zones, financing and rental yields in detail, then give almost no thought to what happens to that same property when they die. Oman does not charge inheritance tax, and non-Muslim foreign owners are not...
A mortgage in Dubai for foreigners is available from most major banks operating in the UAE, and financing has become one of the most common ways international buyers complete a purchase, alongside developer payment plans and outright cash. Unlike some markets where non-resident buyers are quietly excluded from mainstream lending, Dubai's banking sector actively competes for foreign mortgage business, with...
Buying off-plan property in Oman means purchasing a unit before construction is complete, usually straight from the developer inside one of the Sultanate's Integrated Tourism Complexes (ITCs), at a price below what the same unit will cost once it is finished and handed over. It is how most international buyers enter the Omani market today, since the majority of new freehold supply in communities such as Al...
Oman's real estate price index rose 15.9% in Q1 2026, transaction values reached RO 678.1 million by March — up 18.4% year-on-year — and foreign buyers now account for roughly a quarter to a third of all sales in the country's freehold zones. Behind those numbers sits a market at a genuinely early stage of its growth curve: a government actively opening the country to foreign ownership through Royal...
