In the previous article, I mentioned that investment into real estate merits a separate article on its own. It was wrong. The topic is so big that there are multiple articles needed to cover it more or less comprehensively.
There are simply too many aspects to pay attention to if you would like to be successful with your investments in real estate. Certain aspects become even more important if it is about the asset protection in combination with real estate investments.
Asset protection implies that you protect your money, your earnings, your wealth from (illegitimate) access by third parties, be it by robbery, unexpected/ unjustified claims, law changes or legally imposed additional financial burdens in different forms. From that perspective, before investing into real estate you should be sure that your future property is located in a country where your property rights will remain safe and invulnerable as much as possible.
Looking into the current situation in the EU, you read and hear everywhere that public treasuries in all countries are empty (that there are hundreds of billions from the same treasuries invested in vain into nonsense projects within and outside of many EU countries, is a different topic. You can find them, for example, in the annual Schwarzbuch der Steuerzahler (Black Book of Taxpayers in Germany) where German non-sense projects are listed and denounced. Similar books exist also in some other countries, like in France Le Livre noir des gaspillages.
There are many ways a government can refill its treasury or reduce its debts. It can either print more of its own fiat money (resulting in inflation, devaluation and therefore also the reduction of the debts value. You can protect your wealth against it, for example, by purchasing precious metals). Or the government can do it by increasing taxes or even inventing new taxes, levies or laws. For example, the German government is seriously discussing additional property levy. Imaginable is also (and some political parties are actively pushing for it) a so-called Lastenausgleich (“burden sharing”). The value of your property is evaluated and a part of it (e.g. 50%) has to be re-paid once again during the next 30 years. Saying it in an exaggerated way: you could wake up one day and learn that you are a “happy” owner of a new debt of 50% of your housing value and you have 30 years in front of you to pay it off, even though your house had no debts yet yesterday. A similar situation happened, for example, right after the Second World War in Germany (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lastenausgleich). In other words, there are already precedents in history.
You as a real estate owner can be forced to modernize your property by law. Even if you think that this is not the right moment or not the right investment, you will have no choice but to execute the imposed law. Some political parties go so far as to claim that owners who would not like to follow or are not able to execute the imposed law would be dispossessed.
While you can emigrate into another state if you feel you are being treated unfairly in your country, your property cannot, it is immovable and completely at the government’s mercy.
Now I’m coming back to the beginning of this article: it is important to select right countries for your property investments, countries respecting the property and the property rights, to be sure that you would not face such bad surprises as mentioned above. And if your property can have a nice rate of return on investment – even better. Surely, nobody can look into the crystal ball and see the future. But you can do the best possible decision based on the currently available information.
Today I would like to mention the location combining the security of property rights with high double-digit ROI and having a booming real estate. It is so booming that margins of 50% and more are not just realistic but nearly normal with the right choice of the project and the right partner. At the same time, it is not overheated like many other cities in the world as you can see on the screenshot of the Global Real Estate Bubble Index of UBS below. I’m talking about properties in Dubai.
Dubai 2040 Urban Master Plan intends to double the population by 2040 from currently 3,5 million up to 7,8 million. The worldwide biggest airport is being constructed in Dubai. Dubai is strategically located between Europe, Asia and Africa and is the home hub for Emirates – one of the best airlines in the world based on different ratings, among others Skytrax.
Dubai strongly invests in different economic sectors, like technology, finance, tourism and has a fully developed infrastructure. Dubai is about to become the financial center or even a financial capital for BRICS+ countries. The security in Dubai is comparable with that in Singapore: you can walk anywhere in Dubai at any time of day or night without fear that something bad could happen. Can you imagine a president or a prime minister of any of the European countries calmly drinking coffee in a local shopping mall among all the visitors and tourists? In Dubai you can, for example, be surprised by recognizing the Sheikh at the table close to yours in the Dubai mall, as the security is provided everywhere any time.
Dubai holds most of the world records, like the tallest building, the biggest shopping mall, the biggest observation wheel, the longest automated (driver-less) metro in the world etc.
In general, the infrastructure in Dubai is very well developed and is getting better and better. Whether you wish to travel across Dubai by metro, bus, tram or taxi – you can always find the most convenient solution fast and easy.
If you look at big cities, like San Francisco, London or Singapore, you will notice that with the population growth the prices for real estate tripled or even quadrupled in the last decades. Dubai is currently at the very beginning of this process which makes it a strategically interesting time point for investments. This is also shown in the analysis of UBS about the price dynamic:
Source: UBS GREBI 2024
As you can see, Dubai has the biggest price growth in real estate worldwide. And it is just the beginning.
Nearly all new construction projects in Dubai are planned in a way that they offer everything you might need directly within the new area. Depending on the project you might have shopping, relaxation, parks, lakes or sea, fitness, golf, restaurants, different services directly at your door. This also reflects in the value growth of your property.
The icing on the cake of real estate investments in Dubai is the investment in off-plan objects. Why off-plan instead of turnkey objects? Well, there are multiple reasons:
- Off-plan objects are offered mainly at lower prices than the ready-to-go one’s and have therefore strong price growth potential
- You do not need to invest the full purchase price at once but can start with lower initial investments (one of the recently launched projects had the starting point of 54.000 euro only). Low starting points allow you to invest in projects with very high value without needing to have higher 6-digit amounts ready for payment.
- You pay additional rates depending on the progress of the construction
- It is stress-free and not time-consuming: as the object is absolutely new you do not need to take care of any renovation, furniture exchange etc.
- Attractive growth of the object value: already during the construction phase and especially at the completion of the construction work, the value of the real estate continues to grow
- Flexible payment plans from the construction company allow you to use your capital more efficiently. This could be compared with an interest-free credit
- The digitalization in Dubai makes it easy to manage your investments into real estate: with the app REST you can manage all aspects of your real estate investment directly on your smartphone – from the signature of the purchase contract through its management to the observation of the construction progress. Everything is just one click away
How can you be sure that the investment you will engage in is really a serious one? Indeed, for a new investor it is not always easy to separate the wheat from the chaff: which construction company is the best one? Who is the best agent for real estate?
Our partner in Dubai officially belongs to the best five real estate agents (among nearly 10.000 active in the market) and has direct access to the best projects yet before they are officially launched. This allows him to reserve the necessary number of best apartments depending on the number of interested investors before the project goes on an official start. And here I need to stress: best apartments (best situation within the building, like the level, the view, best suitable size etc.) which secures the best potential value growth in the future.
Very often, such projects do not even have time to be officially published, because the most apartments are sold in private sales before. You can become part of this insider community with access to exclusive real estate projects and secure the best suitable apartments before everybody else. You just need to contact us at the first step.
Does our partner work with serious construction companies? Definitely yes. If you’ve been already in Dubai, you could not ignore names like Emaar (the biggest construction company in the world, if not taking into consideration China) who successfully constructed unique and breathtaking buildings like Burj Khalifa or Dubai Mall. As an example, Emaar is one of the companies our partner works with directly, without any intermediaries.
If you are interested in the topic, feel free to request a first introductory meeting with us free of charge
