Buying a resale villa in Dubai: inspect the services, not the kitchen

A dated kitchen is a price. An undersized electrical board or a failing membrane is a problem.

Most resale viewings in this corridor are conducted as an assessment of finishes. Buyers look at the kitchen, the bathrooms and the flooring, and form a view. That is backwards, because finishes are the one part of a property whose replacement cost you can look up in an afternoon.

Services are the opposite: expensive to replace, invisible once finished, and impossible to price accurately without opening something.

Inspection order that gets to the answer fastest

1. Plant rooms and the distribution board. Air conditioning age, service history and capacity. Board capacity against the actual load, presence of RCD protection, and whether circuits are labelled.
2. Ceiling voids and access panels. Open everything you are permitted to. Look at duct routes, insulation condition, condensate drainage and any staining.
3. Roof and waterproofing. On a villa this is your responsibility. Check the membrane age, the falls, the outlets, and ceilings below wet areas for staining.
4. External metalwork. The underside of balcony rails, fixings around external lights, terrace door hardware. These reveal both the original specification grade and the maintenance history.
5. Window and door seals. Operation, seals, closers, and any misting inside a double-glazed unit, which means seal failure.
6. Cold bridges and mould. Feel wall junctions. Look behind every fitted wardrobe you can access. Check corners, lintels and slab edges.
7. Then, and only then, the kitchen.

What differs by property type

Questions worth asking the agent

• What is the age and service history of the air conditioning plant, and is there a maintenance contract?
• Has the electrical distribution been upgraded, and is there a certificate?
• Has the roof or any balcony membrane been replaced, and when?
• What works have been carried out, by whom, and were permits obtained and closed out?
• Are as-built drawings and warranties available for any alteration?
• What are the annual service charges, and what have the major special levies been?
• In a tower: what does the owners association permit, and has anyone in this stack been refused?

The last of those is more useful than it sounds. In a managed building, a neighbour who was refused an alteration tells you where the real boundary of what you may do lies — and it is often narrower than the published rules suggest.

The unpermitted alteration

The most dangerous thing to find on a resale is work that was carried out without a permit. Identify the authority for the specific property and ask a qualified professional to check documentation for structural or MEP changes.

Ask directly whether every alteration was permitted and whether a completion certificate exists. If documentation is missing for an extension or moved kitchen, ask the authority or a qualified surveyor to verify the approval status. The Trakhees guide explains what a compliant process looks like, which makes a non-compliant one easier to spot.

After you buy

If you are planning works, the sequencing advice in the timeline guide applies with one addition specific to a resale: do the services assessment before the design, not during it. A design that assumes capacity the property does not have is a design that will be redrawn, and on a resale the services are the part most likely to disappoint.