The Realist’s Case: Lukas Kerrebijn of RD Dubai on the Narrative Dubai’s Agents Won’t Question

A convenient story is circulating in Dubai this year. Construction costs have climbed, the argument goes, so developers cannot launch at lower prices, which means there is no bad time to buy and every reason to buy right now.

Parts of that story hold up. Building costs were already forecast to rise around 3 percent across 2026, and the regional conflict earlier this year pushed them higher still, leaving completed, delivered stock cheaper to own than to replace. On paper, that does put a floor under existing assets.

Lukas Kerrebijn, Co-Founder of RD Dubai, has no quarrel with that logic. His quarrel is with what the story leaves out.

The version repeated by much of the market treats demand as if nothing has changed. It has. Apartment prices have edged down roughly 3 percent over the year, transaction volumes have fallen by around a quarter, and the rental market, already cooling under a wave of new supply, softened further as international conflicts have weighed on sentiment. To pretend otherwise, in Kerrebijn’s view, is not salesmanship. It is a credibility problem.

He would rather say the harder thing.

The conflict has had a real effect, demand has genuinely dipped, and an honest advisor should acknowledge both rather than paper over them. Kerrebijn treats that transparency as the actual differentiator in a market crowded with people talking their own book. Challenging the comfortable narrative, he argues, is precisely what earns an investor’s trust, because the advisor willing to name the downside is the one worth believing on the upside.

And the upside, in his account, is intact.

Kerrebijn has always approached real estate as a long-term game, and from that vantage the current disruption reads as temporary rather than structural. The fundamentals that made the UAE compelling have not moved: rental yields still sit near 7 percent, personal and rental income remain untaxed, and the market has recovered from every prior shock, from the 2008 crash to the 2020 pandemic to earlier bouts of regional tension, each time returning to higher ground.

That history is the core of his argument. A short-term dip, whether geopolitical or market-driven, is a blip against a decade-long horizon, and it changes how an investor should act in the near term without changing the overall thesis. The conflict is unfortunate and unresolved, and Kerrebijn is candid that he wishes it over, both for the region and for a country he believes was drawn into something it never sought. But a temporary shock does not rewrite a long-term case.

The distinction he is drawing is between honesty and optimism, and he refuses to trade one for the other.

Most of the market is selling optimism without the honesty. Kerrebijn’s wager is that the two work better together, and that in a year defined by uncertainty, the realist ends up more persuasive than the cheerleader.

The message is simple: buy for the long term, but buy with your eyes open.The Realist’s Case: Lukas Kerrebijn on the Narrative Dubai’s Agents Won’t Question

A convenient story is circulating in Dubai this year. Construction costs have climbed, the argument goes, so developers cannot launch at lower prices, which means there is no bad time to buy and every reason to buy right now.

Parts of that story hold up. Building costs were already forecast to rise around 3 percent across 2026, and the regional conflict earlier this year pushed them higher still, leaving completed, delivered stock cheaper to own than to replace. On paper, that does put a floor under existing assets.

Lukas Kerrebijn, Co-Founder of RD Dubai, has no quarrel with that logic. His quarrel is with what the story leaves out.

The version repeated by much of the market treats demand as if nothing has changed. It has. Apartment prices have edged down roughly 3 percent over the year, transaction volumes have fallen by around a quarter, and the rental market, already cooling under a wave of new supply, softened further as international conflicts have weighed on sentiment. To pretend otherwise, in Kerrebijn’s view, is not salesmanship. It is a credibility problem.

He would rather say the harder thing.

The conflict has had a real effect, demand has genuinely dipped, and an honest advisor should acknowledge both rather than paper over them. Kerrebijn treats that transparency as the actual differentiator in a market crowded with people talking their own book. Challenging the comfortable narrative, he argues, is precisely what earns an investor’s trust, because the advisor willing to name the downside is the one worth believing on the upside.

And the upside, in his account, is intact.

Kerrebijn has always approached real estate as a long-term game, and from that vantage the current disruption reads as temporary rather than structural. The fundamentals that made the UAE compelling have not moved: rental yields still sit near 7 percent, personal and rental income remain untaxed, and the market has recovered from every prior shock, from the 2008 crash to the 2020 pandemic to earlier bouts of regional tension, each time returning to higher ground.

That history is the core of his argument. A short-term dip, whether geopolitical or market-driven, is a blip against a decade-long horizon, and it changes how an investor should act in the near term without changing the overall thesis. The conflict is unfortunate and unresolved, and Kerrebijn is candid that he wishes it over, both for the region and for a country he believes was drawn into something it never sought. But a temporary shock does not rewrite a long-term case.

The distinction he is drawing is between honesty and optimism, and he refuses to trade one for the other.

Most of the market is selling optimism without the honesty. Kerrebijn’s wager is that the two work better together, and that in a year defined by uncertainty, the realist ends up more persuasive than the cheerleader.

The message is simple: buy for the long term, but buy with your eyes open.