UAE mortgages for American & US buyers.

If you're a UAE resident

US nationals resident in the UAE can borrow up to 80% of the property value on a first home (70% above), on the same terms as any UAE resident.

If you're buying from abroad

Buying from the US, you can finance UAE property as a non-resident, generally up to 50–75% of the value, with a larger deposit and a slightly different document set.

How we help American & US buyers

• Finance as a UAE resident (up to 80% LTV) or as a US-based non-resident (typically 50–75%).
• US persons carry additional bank reporting obligations, and lenders differ in how readily they onboard them.
• Buy remotely from the US through a Power of Attorney.
• Take US tax advice on owning and letting overseas property — that is outside what a mortgage broker can advise on.

Currency: what the dirham peg means for you

The UAE dirham has been pegged to the US dollar at AED 3.6725 since 1997. If your income is in USD, that peg is arguably the most useful number on this page: a mortgage priced in dirhams behaves, from your side of the transaction, exactly like a mortgage priced in dollars.

Take a AED 3,200,000 apartment as an example. At the peg, that is roughly USD 871,000. Whether the dirham moves against other currencies over the life of the deal makes no difference to you, because it isn't moving against the dollar — it can't, by design. Over a 25-year mortgage term, that matters more than it looks. A buyer earning in a floating currency has to think about what a fixed AED repayment might cost in their own money five, ten or twenty years out. You don't carry that problem. Your monthly payment in dirhams converts to a near-identical number of dollars on the day you take the mortgage and on the day you repay it.

This is a genuine structural advantage of buying in the UAE with USD income, not a sales pitch — the peg has held for close to three decades, and pricing your borrowing in a currency that tracks your income removes an entire category of risk that affects buyers in floating currencies.

Buying from the United States without flying over

You do not need to be in Dubai to buy here. A Power of Attorney, drawn up either in the UAE or notarised in the US, lets a nominated representative — commonly your lawyer or YOUAE — sign the sale and purchase agreement, accept the mortgage offer, and complete the transfer at the Dubai Land Department on your behalf.

That covers most of the paperwork trail. What it typically doesn't remove is the lender's own identity checks: banks generally still need to confirm who you are, whether by video call or a document you sign yourself, before the mortgage is funded.

Once that initial verification is done, the rest can run remotely: valuation, mortgage approval, signing, and registration can all be coordinated by YOUAE while you stay in the US. Many American buyers complete a Dubai purchase without a single trip.

One thing to plan for: the UAE is not a party to the Hague Apostille Convention, so an apostille on its own is not enough — a document signed abroad needs the full consular chain: authentication at home, attestation by the UAE embassy in that country, then attestation by the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, plus a certified Arabic translation by a Ministry of Justice–licensed translator. For property specifically, the Dubai Land Department expects its own standard POA template naming the property (by plot, title deed or Oqood number) and the exact transaction it authorises; custom-drafted POAs are routinely rejected, and the document must be registered with the Dubai Courts Notary Public even when it was notarised overseas. Start this early — it is the step that most often delays a remote purchase.

Documents, and where applications usually slow down

Whatever your residency status, a UAE bank wants to see identity (passport, and UAE residence visa if you have one), proof of income, and evidence of where your deposit is coming from. Salaried applicants typically provide payslips and bank statements; a common minimum income guideline is around AED 10,000 a month for salaried resident applicants, with self-employed applicants generally needing more — AED 25,000-50,000 a month — plus a trade licence active for at least two years, two years of audited financials, and 6-12 months of bank statements. Banks then apply a discount, typically 20-40%, to self-employed income before using it to assess affordability.

For American applicants, the friction is rarely the income evidence itself — US pay records and bank statements are generally straightforward for a UAE bank to read. It's more often the source-of-funds trail and the additional reporting questions that come with US citizenship or green card status, which can add a round or two of document requests that a non-US applicant wouldn't see.

Getting income and source-of-funds documents organised before you apply, rather than assembling them once a bank asks, is the single most effective way to keep a US application moving at the pace it should.

One thing to plan for: the UAE is not a party to the Hague Apostille Convention, so an apostille on its own is not enough — a document signed abroad needs the full consular chain: authentication at home, attestation by the UAE embassy in that country, then attestation by the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, plus a certified Arabic translation by a Ministry of Justice–licensed translator. For property specifically, the Dubai Land Department expects its own standard POA template naming the property (by plot, title deed or Oqood number) and the exact transaction it authorises; custom-drafted POAs are routinely rejected, and the document must be registered with the Dubai Courts Notary Public even when it was notarised overseas. Start this early — it is the step that most often delays a remote purchase.

Tax: what the UAE charges, and what to check at home

On the UAE side, the position is simple and applies to every buyer regardless of nationality: there is no personal income tax, no annual property tax, and no capital gains tax for individuals on property in the UAE. Buying, holding and eventually selling a UAE property carries none of those costs here.

The US side is different, and it is one place we can be specific rather than simply telling you to seek advice: US citizens and green card holders are taxed by the US on worldwide income regardless of where they live or where the income arises. That means rental income from a Dubai property, and any gain on sale, is a US tax question even though the UAE itself charges nothing.

We are mortgage brokers, not tax advisers, so we won't tell you what to file or when — that's a conversation for a US tax professional who handles overseas property, ideally before you buy rather than after. What we can do is make sure the mortgage side is arranged cleanly, with documentation that will hold up if a US accountant ever asks for it.

Compare lenders & costs

We compare every major UAE bank for your profile — see also our Dubai mortgages guide, the calculators, and the full cost of buying. Whether you're resident or investing from abroad, we manage it end to end.