In Dubai you sign for a year after a 20-minute viewing.
A listing shows you the bedrooms and the view. It won’t tell you the walls are thin, block 2 backs onto six lanes of traffic, or that the lift queues will cost you twenty extra minutes per day. Google holds pieces of this information, but scattered across a thousand place pages and mixed in with staff complaints and people who stayed in an Airbnb for the weekend.
You find out the truth in month two, long after the agent’s commission and fees have left your account, and with months still left on the lease. The people in the building could have told you everything you needed to know upfront. HomeTruths allows them to share their experiences and you to hear them – real resident reviews, clearly presented, so you know the truth before you sign.
4,643
residences: 4,521 apartment buildings and 122 villa communities
147
areas of Dubai covered and tracked, each ranked on its own so a building is compared with its neighbours
48,251
online reviews dating back to 2018, sourced, cleaned and correctly sorted to the building they describe
1,293
with a registered DLD rent or sale price, not an estimate
Marina Gate
Dubai Marina
“Staff is always super friendly and you have 4 supermarkets in 2min walking distance.”
“The property has incredible views of the marina (if you are at the front). Infinity pool gets sun all day and is full of nice things to look at. Guys on reception are awesome. Its easy to get in and out of onto SZ. Next door to spinnys and M&S. Generally a young cool crowd. Only negative is the fire alarm goes off a little too easily/often.”
Our mission
Everyone in Dubai is an expert on one address: their own. HomeTruths provides a platform for residents to share their experiences clearly, so finding a home gets easier and more transparent for everyone.
It works when people are able to make better decisions before they commit, and ultimately find themselves happier homes that suit their lifestyle.
No promoted spots, no commissions: a building climbs the rankings only because the residents inside love it.
What you can do here
Every Google review in Dubai, cleaned and filed by tower
We sourced all online reviews since 2018, stripped spam and fakes, and filed each one to the exact tower it describes rather than wider development. HomeTruths takes it even further: a purpose-built survey with questions built around actually living there, enabling residents to clearly share their experience with you.
Filter by your criteria, and by what it’s actually like to live there
Filter for no construction noise. Or no pest reports, no thin walls, no lift queues. Then search for the things you do want – great staff, a pool that gets sun all day, easy visitor parking. So you can screen a whole city on things no listing will ever tell you.
Check out rich residence profiles before you spend time on a viewing
Every residence has its own profile page, the verdict, resident ratings, prices by unit type, what to check before you sign. Clear pictures of the pool and gym. Because a great address doesn’t always mean a great home.
And more:
- See the Top 10 for every area, and for Dubai as a whole.
- Shortlist the places that catch your eye, then compare them side by side – facilities, prices, key facts and reviews.
- Watch any score move month by month.
- Read residents' insider tips, or ask them a question of your own.
How scores are calculated
We sourced every Google review in Dubai
Back to 2018, building by building, read and translated whatever language they arrived in. Agents' padded stars get stripped and review farms – the same employee praised in review after review – get binned. What's left is organised by tower and collated across blocks, so the same place under three names becomes one record.
We designed a survey only a resident can answer
On top of the public record sits HomeTruths' own survey, built around what it's actually like to live there and captured in one standard shape – so what residents know becomes comparable across the city.
We apply sophisticated weighting and scoring
Public reviews polarise: most people write at one star or five. A resident who lives with the building every day outweighs a visitor who parked there once, a detailed answer outweighs a drive-by star, and newer reviews outweigh stale ones, since management turns over and chillers age. A handful of extreme reviews can't run the score.
One score you can rely on
What survives becomes the HT Score: one number out of 100, ranked against its own kind – buildings against buildings, villa communities against their peers. Thin evidence stays in its place: a 5.0 from two reviews never sits above a 4.7 from two thousand.
The Ten Questions
Ten questions, designed to surface the most important insights no listing can provide - only questions a resident can answer but a visitor cannot.
- 1Does the residence have any of the following issues?
- 2How are the fixtures, fittings and general build quality?
- 3How friendly, helpful & professional are the residence staff?
- 4How easy is it to get in and out of the building?
- 5How is traffic on your commutes - better or worse than expected?
- 6Does the pool get sun? If so, when?
- 7Who are your neighbours, mostly?
- 8How close are everyday shops and services?
- 9How would you rate the swimming pool, gym and other communal facilities?
- 10Overall, how would you rate living here?
We’re building this together. These ten questions came from residents, and they’re not finished. If something matters where you live and we don’t ask about it, tell us. It might become the eleventh.
Would you tell a friend to move in?
Two minutes. Ten questions. Every future resident of your building will thank you.
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