Luís Santos

Founder & Explorer
Co-Founder, First Class | 600+ homes, UAE
Every country before 40 — 167/197
Dubai 🇦🇪 based, from Portugal 🇵🇹

[Luís Santos @luissantosco]

Market occupancy in the UAE fell to 48% in Q2. A year earlier it was 73%. RevPAR down 46.5%.

Our portfolio closed the quarter at 87%.

Demand did not disappear. It changed shape.

[Luís Santos @luissantosco]

@TheNationalNews @FirstClassDXB is the operator quoted here. More than 90 per cent of our units are now let monthly, to UAE residents rather than tourists. Average stay last quarter, 21 days. People want a home that works from day one without committing to twelve months.

[Luís Santos @luissantosco]

We run revenue management, guest operations, maintenance and compliance as one system.
Most operators run them as four departments handing work to each other.
That handoff is where margin dies.

[Luís Santos @luissantosco]

The practical shift for tenants is that flexible housing stops being something you arrange with a leaseholder and becomes something you rent from a landlord or licensed operator directly. The demand for monthly terms is not going anywhere. Nearly 70% of our Q2 nights were a month or longer. What changes on the 26th is who is allowed to serve it.

[Luís Santos @luissantosco]

The monthly payment requirement is the detail worth sitting on. Between this and Flexi Rent, Dubai is quietly standardising monthly rhythm across the whole housing market. Demand moved there first. Nearly 70% of our Q2 nights were stays of a month or longer. The regulation is catching up to how people already live here.

[Luís Santos @luissantosco]

The rentals market ran the exact same divergence in Q2. Tourist short stay demand reset hard, occupancy citywide fell to 48%. But nearly 70% of our nights were stays of a month or longer. The speculative demand cooled, the end user demand stayed. Same maturity story, seen from the operating side.

[Luís Santos @luissantosco]

Dubai’s Flexi Rent scheme lets landlords take rent monthly instead of one annual cheque.
That is the long term market borrowing from the short term one. The annual cheque was always the friction.
@gulf_news @TheNationalNews

[Luís Santos @luissantosco]

@TradeArabia On matched one bedroom units the short term yield ran about 1.4x long term over the twelve months to June. The gap is widest in mid market communities like JVC and Creek Harbour where flexible monthly demand has been strongest.

[Luís Santos @luissantosco]

@pankajkharode Listings peaked at 36,500 in January and have corrected every month since March. Still up 10.2% on the year. The occupancy drop was far steeper than the supply move, which tells you the shock came from the demand side, not oversupply.

[Luís Santos @luissantosco]

@thetitledeed The rental trade framing is right. What surprised us in Q2 was where the demand went. Nearly 70% of our nights were stays of 29 days or longer. People are renting monthly while they decide, and that sits between the two markets everyone measures.

[Luís Santos @luissantosco]

@khaleejtimes covered our Q2 Index this week. Their read was that the market is going through a cyclical adjustment, not a structural decline.

The numbers they pulled out were 33,795 active listings in Dubai, up 10.2% on last year, and nearly 70% of our portfolio nights now coming from extended stays.

Full report at https://t.co/exqyPOCbiF

https://t.co/2Nslyaydwc

[Luís Santos @luissantosco]

@gulf_news The subletting ban is the clause with teeth. Tenants can no longer offer rooms on their own, so flexible housing demand shifts to landlords and licensed operators who can do monthly terms legally. September's monthly stay numbers will be worth watching.

[Luís Santos @luissantosco]

@MansionGlobal Matches what we saw operator side. Q2 market occupancy came in at 48%, RevPAR down 46.5% year on year. Softness at that scale is also when portfolios change hands. We bought a 45 unit block in exactly this window.

[Luís Santos @luissantosco]

@gulf_news The annual cheque was the biggest filter on who could rent formally in Dubai. Monthly payments don't create new demand, they let in demand that was always there. Some of it has been sitting in furnished monthly stays because that was the only monthly option available.

[Luís Santos @luissantosco]

The part getting less attention is what happens to the demand. Grey market room rentals were absorbing people who needed flexible housing. That demand doesn't vanish on the 26th, it moves somewhere licensed. We were already seeing 69.4% of our Q2 nights at 29 days or longer before this law existed.

[Luís Santos @luissantosco]

Dubai's shared housing law takes effect on 26 August.

Renting out a room or bed space now requires the landlord's written approval.

Informal subletting has been a quiet part of this market for years. It ends in two weeks.

@khaleejtimes @gulf_news

[Luís Santos @luissantosco]

More of this in the conversation with @HeyBrandyScott on The Business Breakfast, @DubaiEye1038FM.

[Luís Santos @luissantosco]

Market occupancy in the UAE fell to 48% in Q2. A year earlier it was 73%. RevPAR down 46.5%.

Our portfolio closed the quarter at 87%.

Demand did not disappear. It changed shape.

[Luís Santos @luissantosco]

Residents are the demand engine right now, and the government is reading it the same way. A Dubai Invite gives residents over Dh3,000 in perks for bringing family and friends in from overseas, arrivals through 31 October.