Entry Costs, Holding Expenses, and Regulatory Climate: Dubai vs Miami vs New York

Entry Costs and Buying Process

Dubai
Foreigners can buy freehold property in designated areas with 100% ownership. Residency is not required to buy. Off-plan purchases are extremely common: you reserve a unit with ~10%–20% down, then follow a staged developer payment plan during construction, sometimes even post-handover.
Paperwork is relatively fast. The government has intentionally made onboarding easy for non-resident investors. You do pay transaction costs (for example, Dubai Land Department transfer fee around 4%), but compared to U.S. closing complexity, the friction level is low.

Miami
Foreign nationals can buy in Miami without needing U.S. residency or citizenship. You can buy personally or via LLC. The process is a standard American closing: escrow, title company, lawyer review, inspections, appraisal if financing.
Financing as a foreigner is possible but stricter: higher down payments, sometimes higher interest rates.
One huge due diligence point in Miami: the building itself.

HOA rules may limit rentals (for example, minimum 30-day leases or 6-month leases).
Insurance costs in waterfront/high-risk zones can be very high.

Post-Surfside reform in Florida means older buildings face heavy structural audits and sometimes massive special assessments for repairs. That future assessment is effectively part of your entry cost, because if the building needs $100,000 per unit in structural work, buyers will price that in.

New York
Foreign buyers are absolutely allowed, and NYC has decades of foreign capital embedded in Manhattan condos. But the closing environment is bureaucratic and expensive.
You will face:

High legal fees
Transfer taxes and the “Mansion Tax” (which scales upward for high purchase prices)
Title insurance (for condos)

Building board scrutiny
And if you are buying a co-op (a huge part of New York’s housing stock), the board can reject you outright, or restrict your ability to rent out the unit in the first years. For pure investors, condos are usually preferred over co-ops, but condos are more expensive.

Ease of entry ranking:

Dubai – streamlined, investor-friendly, off-plan payment plans, no residency requirement to buy

Miami – standard U.S. process, but you must analyze HOA, insurance, zoning

New York – lawyer-heavy, tax-heavy, board-heavy

Holding Costs and Ongoing Obligations

Dubai
Dubai’s cost drag is light. There is no personal income tax on rental income. There is no recurring annual “property tax” in the U.S. sense. You still have service charges / community fees, maintenance, insurance, property management, and vacancy risk — but the city does not constantly tax your cash flow.
This is one of the main reasons Dubai’s net rental yield stays high.

Miami
Miami’s cost drag is medium.
You pay:

U.S. federal income tax on rental income
Florida property tax (Florida has no state income tax, but property tax itself is meaningful)
HOA / condo association fees (often high in full-service waterfront towers: doorman, gym, spa, valet, pool, etc.)
Insurance (windstorm, flood) which is rising sharply in South Florida

Property management if you’re remote
After those deductions, a headline “7% gross” can become ~4%–6% net. That’s still attractive by U.S. coastal city standards, but it is not tax-free money.

New York
New York’s cost drag is heavy.
You pay:

NYC property taxes
Common charges / HOA / maintenance fees
Sometimes special assessments (building capital repairs, facade work, elevator modernization, etc.)
State and city income tax on rental profit (depending on structure)

Compliance and landlord obligations, which take time and money
This is why Manhattan investors are happy with 2%–3% net yield: the city itself eats a lot of the rent.

Cost drag severity (from heaviest to lightest):

New York
Miami
Dubai

Exit and Resale Liquidity

Dubai
Liquidity in Dubai is cyclical. During hot cycles, investors flip off-plan allocations before completion for a premium. During slower periods, generic mass-market towers can sit because everyone is trying to sell the same kind of inventory at once.
High-identity product — branded residences, true waterfront, iconic locations — stays more liquid because global buyers recognize the address.
Risk: if you buy “one of twenty almost identical towers in the same district,” and they all hand over in the same quarter, you have competition and price pressure.

Miami
Miami has strong resale liquidity in the $500K–$2M band for newer product in good locations. Demand comes from Americans (especially tax-migrants) and Latin America and Europe.
That said, older buildings with high HOA fees and scary structural reports can become illiquid fast. Buyers today are extremely sensitive to the risk of sudden six-figure repair assessments. You must underwrite the building’s physical health, not only the unit.

New York
Manhattan is deep: there is almost always a buyer for a properly priced Central Park view, Tribeca loft, or Midtown pied-à-terre. That global demand is why New York is considered “blue-chip.”
But liquidity is not frictionless. Co-op boards and condo boards have approval power. Rental restrictions and political pressure for affordability can scare purely yield-focused landlords.
In other words, the pool of buyers exists, but institutional and regulatory filters slow the actual closing.

Regulatory and Political Risk

Dubai
Dubai is explicitly pro-investor and generally landlord-friendly. Rent increases are guided by RERA’s rental index, but there is no New York-style rent stabilization that completely freezes upside. The political structure is top-down and can make changes quickly, but historically the UAE has moved toward liberalization to attract foreign capital, not toward punishing landlords.

Miami
Florida is landlord-friendly compared to states like New York. There is no classic rent control. Landlords can reprice to market more freely. Eviction processes are generally faster than in New York.
Main risks in Miami are regulatory limits on short-term rentals (Airbnb, VRBO) in certain zones and buildings, plus the cost pressure from climate/insurance. Future climate-related regulation could add even more cost.
Also, all rental income is in the U.S. tax net, so you are visible to U.S. tax authorities.

New York
New York is the opposite of landlord-friendly. Tenant protection is a political issue. Rent control / rent stabilization, talk of rent freezes, pied-à-terre surcharges, vacancy rules — all of this is part of the public debate.
From an investor point of view, this means you face policy risk. You might buy an apartment assuming you can raise rent 10% every year, and then find out the city or state blocks that in the future.
However, New York also offers the strongest legal infrastructure and property rights enforcement. Your title is extremely secure. It’s just that your freedom to monetize that title the way you want can be restricted by political decisions.

Regulatory risk to landlord upside (highest to lowest):