Apartment, villa or townhouse: at the same bedroom count the flat costs the most

Every type below is priced three ways: what one costs, how big it is, and what the square foot inside it costs. The first column and the last do not rank the same way. Penthouses carry the largest median ticket and the dearest square foot, which is the only place the two agree at the top. Below that the lists cross: apartments sit 5th on ticket and 3rd on rate, because the median one is small. Townhouses are the cheapest square foot in the book while sitting mid table on price.

Comparing a median apartment against a median villa compares a one bedroom flat against a five bedroom house, so the answer is never in doubt and never useful. Fix the bedroom count instead and the order inverts on every rung the ground product publishes deeply.

The types are not competing for the same buyer. Each one clusters on a rung or two and thins out fast either side, so the median ticket is really a statement about which rung the label sells.

58% of the 404 projects publishing townhouses are recorded as sold out or out of stock, against 35% for penthouses. Scarcity is doing the work: the ground product is a smaller book to begin with, and it clears.

Median booking deposits do not slide across the book, they sit on two values. apartments and duplexes ask 20%; villas, townhouses, penthouses ask 10%. That is the tower product on one side and the houses on the other, with penthouses keeping house terms on a tower address. The smaller percentage is not the smaller cheque: 10% of AED 7.81M is AED 781K, against AED 344K on a median apartment.

The generous tail, the part of the price you pay after you have the keys, is written most often on apartments: 18% of their published plans carry one, against 10% on townhouses. The soft terms follow the volume, not the price tag. A tower with hundreds of near identical units needs a reason for the next buyer to sign this month. A short release of houses does not.

Sorted by published completion date, each type has a heaviest year, and they are not the same year. The label that dominates the book turns over fastest, which is what you would expect from the product with the shortest build.

The whole spread between types runs 1,320 to 3,163 AED per sqft, a factor of 2.4. Inside villas alone the emirate spread runs 660 in Ajman to 4,012 in Ras Al Khaimah, a factor of 6.1. Picking the emirate is the larger decision.

103 communities publish at least 25 priced apartments. 4 do for penthouses. A national median for the rare types is a statement about a handful of addresses, and it should be read that way.

Take the middle half of each type and measure how far the top of it sits above the bottom. Penthouses run 1.96 times, Villas only 1.47. The tighter the band, the more the label alone tells you, and the less a comparable is worth hunting for.