Every Dubai community is marketed with the same words, so the marketing tells you nothing. This is the method we use with clients, and it works because it compares things that genuinely differ.

1. Price per square foot, not price

Headline prices are set by unit size as much as by location. Convert both to a rate and the comparison becomes real. Then ask what the more expensive one is buying: a settled environment, a protected view, a better school run, or nothing.

2. The all in monthly figure

Rent or mortgage, plus service charge or community fee, plus cooling, plus commuting. A community that looks cheaper on rent can lose on the total, and commuting is the line people leave out. Work it out for both before you decide.

3. What completes nearby, and when

The single most useful question and almost nobody asks it. A community taking delivery of several hundred similar units in the same year has a different rental and resale outlook from one that is finished. Ask, in both, what is under construction within a kilometre.

4. Drive both commutes at rush hour

Not at the weekend, not on a map. In the direction you would actually travel, at the time you would actually travel. This changes more decisions than any other single test.

5. Visit twice

A Tuesday morning and a Friday evening. Communities that feel identical on a viewing appointment can be very different places at the weekend, particularly the ones built around retail and food.

6. Check the resale record, not the launch price

What has actually transacted in each community in the last year, and at what rate. Launch prices tell you what a developer hoped for. Transactions tell you what buyers paid.

7. Ask what each community is bad at

Every one of them is bad at something: distance, noise, supply, service charges, construction, or age. If nobody will tell you what the weakness is, you have not found it yet. We will tell you, including on communities where we hold stock.

Give us two communities and a budget and we will run this for you. Useful alongside: our comparison of family communities and how to look up a building’s service charge.