“Dubai’s Resilience Is Not a PR Spin - It’s What I’ve Watched Unfold in Real Time”

Lewis Allsopp, Chairman and Co-Founder, Allsopp & Allsopp

Tuesday 10th March, Dubai UAE - I’ve been in Dubai since January 2006. I’ve built a business through the 2008 financial crisis, navigated the Arab Spring, watched Brexit cause chaos for British investors, and managed lockdowns that would have broken businesses with weaker foundations. I like to think I’m reasonably well-equipped to handle most situations when it comes to business and to stay calm when others aren’t.

But a few nights ago, I heard something I’ve never heard before. A military interceptor passed over my house. The noise it made was something else entirely. For a moment, and I’ll be honest about this, because I think honesty matters - profit and loss stopped being the priority. You’re reminded, very quickly, of what actually is. That moment passed. And what has unfolded in the days since has been one of the most remarkable things I’ve witnessed in nearly two decades of living and working here.

This Is No Longer a Regional Problem

I’ve read the comments and I’ve seen the headlines in the UK press. There are people saying the UAE has been dragged into political instability, and plenty of keyboard observers suggesting residents made a mistake being here. I understand the noise. But here is what those commentators are missing.

This is no longer a GCC issue. The United Kingdom, the United States, France, Germany, Cyprus - NATO are all actively involved. When you see British, French, and American military capability operating in the same theatre alongside the UAE, you are not looking at a regional conflict. You are looking at a global one. And that, counterintuitively, changes everything. The political heat is no longer concentrated on Dubai. The world has a stake in this region’s stability, and the world is here to protect it.

What the UAE’s Military Response Has Shown the World

I don’t think I can ever again question the UAE’s defensive capability. What has been demonstrated over the last ten days with the intercepting of over 1,500 incoming threats with an extraordinary success rate is something no other country in the world has been tested on at this scale and passed with this level of effectiveness.

Beyond the military performance, the communication has been exceptional. The UAE government has kept residents informed, calm, and clear on what is happening. Something as seemingly small as changing the alert tone to a softer sound tells you everything about how seriously they take the wellbeing of the people living here. That is not an accident. That is intentional leadership.

And then there is the protection layer that has been built over the UAE. The US, the UK, Spain, France, Ukraine with their advanced drone technology - all present, all operating. This is not simply about defending one country. It is about defending the infrastructure of the global economy. The GCC is a central hub for international business, travel, logistics, and capital. The world has an enormous interest in keeping it functioning. That interest is now physical and present.

Ten Days In: What I’m Seeing on the Ground

In the first 48 hours, I received a handful of messages from clients. Not many, but a few saying “get me out at any price.” I took each one seriously and responded accordingly. By day three, those messages had stopped. Not because people were burying their heads, but because they were watching the same thing I was watching: Dubai carrying on.

The malls are busy. The restaurants are packed. The offices are operating. Outside of occasionally hearing a sound in the evening sky - which most residents have now contextualised and accepted, there is no consequential disruption to daily life in Dubai. That is extraordinary given what is happening geopolitically, and it has directly shaped what I’m seeing in the property market.

The quote I keep hearing from clients, buyers, tenants and investors is this: “Dubai is my home. My kids go to school here. My business is here. Life is as usual.” For an international audience, that might be hard to believe. We live in a world of governments that overpromise and underdeliver, that prioritise political cycles over people. What the UAE has done, even through this crisis, is protect its residents and deliver on the promise of safety and stability. If you live here, you feel it.

What the Property Market Is Actually Doing

I’ve been studying our data closely for the last ten days. Let me share what I’m seeing. In the ready and secondary market, I want to be precise because the nuance matters. People who own property and live in Dubai are not moving on price. Not even close. These owners have enjoyed four to five years of significant capital appreciation, have no mortgage stress, no financial pressure, and critically, understand that if they discount their own asset to exit, they will find nothing cheaper to buy into on the other side. The ecosystem of buying and selling does not allow for panic discounting in isolation. Dubai residents are sitting tight, and sitting tight at their price.

Where we have seen selling instructions come in are from international and absentee owners - people watching events from a distance who feel that distance more acutely. That is a different pool of sellers, and it is worth distinguishing the two. Some of that stock will come to market. But it will not trigger a price correction on its own.

There is also something else happening that I think will quietly create opportunity. When the market is on an aggressive upward trajectory, you accumulate what I call speculative sellers - owners asking above comparable sold data, testing the ceiling. These are marketing prices, not transaction prices. What the current environment does is bring those sellers back to realistic valuations. It creates more genuinely saleable stock, priced on actual data. For a serious, long-term buyer, that is a better market to operate in than one driven by froth.

And the data backs this up. The last three days have shown a 75% increase in viewing activity compared to the first three days of the regional unrest. That is not a market in retreat. That is buyers and tenants re-engaging with confidence.

On the off-plan side, I’m watching developers launch with full rooms. More telling to me are the clients who reserved properties four to five weeks ago, right in the middle of the uncertainty, who are still coming in this week to sign their SPAs. We are not seeing people walk away from commitments. If developers make any adjustments, I expect them to be creative around payment plans, but price per square foot? The underlying values are holding.

I want to be transparent about something, because I think it adds to the picture rather than undermining it. We are fielding calls from off-plan investors asking about their legal position - what happens if they want to pull out, what the contractual implications are, what their options look like. That is a natural and legitimate question when the world feels uncertain, and we take every one of those conversations seriously. But here is what happens when you have that conversation properly - when you walk through what other investors are actually doing, what we are seeing on the ground, what the sentiment genuinely is in this city right now. Almost without exception, those investors don’t pull out. They don’t just stay put out of inertia either. They end the conversation with more confidence in the UAE than they had when they started it. The logic holds up. The fundamentals hold up. And when people are presented with reality rather than noise, they arrive at the right conclusion themselves.

And for the investors circling, looking for distressed deals, I’ll say this plainly. Where genuine value does exist, there are international funds and institutional buyers ready to move before any opportunistic retail investor gets a look in. The window for “cheap” in Dubai has been closed for some time.

Where I’m Putting My Own Money. And Where I’m Not

I’ll share something personal, because I think actions speak louder than opinion pieces. I owned a property in London and bought it in 2020 as a family base, outgrew it as our family grew, and eventually sold it and bought a new one in Chelsea. Six years after owning that first property, I sold at a 13% loss. As an international buyer on the replacement, I paid 17% in stamp duty to the government before I’d even moved a piece of furniture in. If I’d rented it in the interim, the rental income would have been taxed. If I’d made a profit on the sale, that would have been taxed too.

Now look at Dubai. Your transfer fee is 4%. There is no capital gains tax. There is no income tax on rental earnings. And when you want to sell, you are operating in one of the most liquid property markets on earth where transactions move quickly, cleanly, and efficiently. Yes, there is a geopolitical situation unfolding around the region right now. But the structural proposition of investing here has not changed by a single percentage point.

For anyone who follows my content or reads my newsletter: I am an investor myself, and I want to be completely transparent about what I am doing. I am selling nothing. I have off-plan in Jebel Ali. I have off-plan in Ras Al Khaimah. I have commercial assets. I have rental income properties. I have branded residential holdings, including at the Atlantis Royal, One Zaabeel, I have small rental Apartments. My home is at Jumeirah Golf Estates. Not one of these assets is for sale, and none will be in the foreseeable future. I say that not to list some of what I own, but to be clear: I put my money where my analysis is. And my analysis says Dubai, right now, remains one of the best places in the world to hold real estate.

The Sentiment Is Resilience And It Has Been Earned

I’ve spoken to people in the UK this week who have told me that watching how the UAE has handled this situation has made them want to invest and live here more, not less. That is not marketing. That is a lived response to what people are observing in real time.

This has been one of the most significant tests Dubai has ever faced as a city and as a proposition for residents, businesses, and investors. We are ten days in. The malls are open. The deals are being signed. The data is moving in the right direction.

Dubai has come through it in flying colours so far. And I say that not as a headline, but as someone who has been here every single day watching it happen.

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