The Dubai year: what actually changes between November and September

Newcomers plan their first year as if it were a European one, with a gentle curve either side of a warm middle. The city does not work like that. It has a long season in which life happens outdoors and a shorter one in which it does not, and almost everything else — what things cost, how full the restaurants are, how quickly a flat lets, how long the walk to the metro feels — moves with that line rather than across it.

The season: roughly November to April

This is when the city is what the photographs show. Promenades are used constantly, beach districts are busy from morning until late at weekends, and the outdoor programme runs: the Christmas markets open from 1 November to 31 January, typically from late afternoon until midnight, with Al Habtoor Winter Garden the largest and the most family-oriented of them. Around New Year, Downtown is effectively closed to traffic — a fact worth knowing whether you live there or are trying to get somewhere through it.

For letting, this is the strong half. For living, it is the half in which the district you chose either earns its premium or does not: a promenade you use daily, a park within a walk, a beach at the end of the street.

The summer: roughly June to September

Dubai tourism falls sharply from June to September, and a beach-driven location falls harder than a city one. That single fact reorganises a lot:

• Short-let income is not an annual average. Occupancy is seasonal, with a strong winter and a slow summer, which pulls the annual figure closer to a long let than the winter months suggest. Model winter and summer independently and add them rather than taking an average that conceals both.
• Walking distances change meaning. A fifteen-minute walk to a station in July is not a walk. This is why covered routes matter so much in the central districts and why two buildings equidistant on a map can be entirely different addresses, and it is the reason to walk the route you are relying on in the month you would really walk it.
• Outdoor life moves after dark. The creek and marina promenades stay in use in summer, but as an after-dark activity — and that is true across the whole city, not only on the water.
• Cooling becomes the bill that matters. How it is billed is set by the building: in some it sits inside the service charge, in others it is metered on top, and the annual difference runs to multiples. A tenant compares total monthly cost rather than headline rent, which is why an identical unit with cooling billed separately at a high fixed capacity charge lets for less. Establish the arrangement in writing before you commit; the mechanics of the cooling account are their own subject and we have written them up separately.
• The city thins out. Households with school-age children frequently leave for part of it, which shows in traffic, in restaurant trade and in how quickly anything gets done.

The calendar that is not the thermometer

Two other rhythms sit on top of the temperature. Ramadan moves through the year on the lunar calendar rather than sitting in a fixed month: working hours shorten, the day's centre of gravity moves to the evening, and the pattern of eating out, shopping and traffic changes with it for its duration. Confirm the dates for the year in question and what your own employer's hours will be, rather than assuming last year's pattern.

The second is the working week and its weekend, which is when the busy districts are busiest. In Festival City the mall draws people from across the eastern bank, and on a Friday evening the car parks and approach roads are markedly busier than on a weekday. In JBR the Walk and The Beach are among the most visited public spaces in the city and residents either love that or leave within a year.

What to do with all of this

• View in the worst month you can. A district seen in February flatters itself. If you can only view in winter, at least walk the routes you will depend on and be honest about them at forty degrees.
• Budget the year rather than the month. Cooling is not a flat line, and a household that budgets from a March bill will be wrong in August.
• If income depends on visitors, write two models. One for the season, one for the summer, and add them. The gross rate multiplied by 365 is the number that sells a strategy and never the number that arrives.
• Time the letting deliberately. Family demand follows the school calendar rather than tourism, which is one of the reasons family districts have shorter voids and longer tenancies than the headline addresses.

Based on the letting, short-let and service charge answers in this site's English buyer's FAQ, and on district material in the English area guides — Downtown, JBR, Festival City, Discovery Gardens and the waterfront districts.