Myvilla.com Tracks Down the Real Estate Scenario in Dubai

DUBAI, UAE - May 21, 2018 - PRLog -- Since the launch of Myvilla.com in 2017-18, the website has grown its listing to 8000+ properties for sale or rent in Dubai. After onboarding several top-rated agencies, the website promises the much-needed growth in marketing villas, townhouses, and bungalows for real estate investors all around the world. Although MyVilla.com is backed by a strong technology team that aspires to build the most comprehensive e-property platform, it is the dynamics of the market that propels the business of online real estate. Find out what makes our online real estate marketplace tick.

A reality check on Dubai's property market

There has been a continuous slowdown in the residential market in the past few years. However, in the last one year, the rate of decline in sale prices has been almost negligible at 0.5%. More than 2000 off-plan transaction came from Business Bay, Jumeirah Village Circle and Downtown Dubai as these areas continue to be the favorites among real estate buyers. Off-plan sales showed a huge jump of more than 50% from last year and accounted for 65% of all property sales. The next 3 years is likely to see close to 90,000 residential units (includes condominiums and villas) being offered in the market. Also, the current focus on affordable housing project by the government should shift some of the residents back to Dubai who had left the city for lower rents in other emirates. Though, Dubai's high rentals make it lucrative for current homeowners and buyers to invest in ready homes here.

Property type (apartments/villas/townhouses/bungalows) fetching good rental yields

Yields are dependent on a number of factors. Worldwide it is a known fact that smaller the unit, more affordable it is in terms of the sale price and rental. That, however, comes with aspects involving the location of the building, neighborhoods, access to work, school, shops and entertainment places, building maintenance and operating costs, amenities – just to name a few. Community living is now the in-thing among people with families. Better rental yields are trending on completed community projects. It is found that affordable freehold communities offer the best gross yields in town - International City at 9.16 per cent and Discovery Gardens at 8.85 per cent. Other communities that offer mid-tier housing such as International Media Production Zone, Barsha Heights, Jumeirah Village Circle and Dubailand also offer gross yields close to 8% and above.

Since villas are a larger area of housing (https://www.myvilla.com/en/rent), they are considered more as a holding investment than a means for high yield rental income. At 5.1%,

Mohammed Bin Rashid City and at 4.87%, Jumeirah Golf Estates, rental yields of villas in these neighborhoods are closer to global averages. (Data source: Cavendish Maxwell)

The average sale price of a villa in Dubai

In terms of secondary market sales of villas (https://www.myvilla.com/en/buy) and townhouses, Emirates Living and Arabian Ranches saw the highest number of transactions in January 2018 with an average selling price of USD 1.55 million in Emirates Living and USD 0.93 million in Arabian Ranches. Dubai South (Dubai World Center) offers the lowest average sale price of USD 0.44 million and Palm Jumeirah Fronds (Garden Homes) go as high as USD 4.17 million.

Trending neighborhoods for buying villas

"We notice a substantial increase in users searching the below neighborhoods for investments and purchase. These are just-ready properties or in the process of handover. When it comes to the latest communities Maple and Club Villas at Dubai Hills Estate, a development by Emaar; Amaranta Townhouses at Villanova, a development by Dubai Properties are considered hot.

"When it comes to secondary market trending locations for buying as well as renting Villas are Mira and Arabian Ranches. We also see a lot of interest for Palm Villas, Emirates Hills and Hattan from the high net worth customer base," says Hanna A, Key Account Manager at MyVilla.com (https://www.myvilla.com/)

Impact of Technology in Real Estate transactions

From the days of yore where real estate transactions involved the cumbersome manual process of finding an agent from the directory or a print advertisement, arranging for property visits, going through numerous paperwork and spending all that time going back and forth in asking property details, property buying has come a long way. The Internet has changed the ways of doing business permanently. For instance, MyVilla.com chooses its agents carefully and onboard them through an exhaustive authentication process and ensures they are RERA authorized.

For MyVilla.com, the internet has certainly brought customers close to the online property market but not without its own set of challenges. Handling online enquiries from international customers means sorting through the quality of leads. Too many enquiries make it hard to narrow down to the qualified ones. All this is changing in the coming months. With a well-established digital marketing strategy using popular social media handles such as Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, Quora and using the website's own Blog section to provide quality and informative content to real estate investors, the website plans to augment its platform for a better user experience in buying, selling and renting of properties in Dubai. This also ensures that agents can leverage on brand visibility for themselves and their company. MyVilla.com focuses on its analytics to provide insights such as market trends, price changes, location tendencies to home buyers in helping them make an informed decision on their investments and in return hopes to sift through better quality of leads coming into the website.