Jumeirah Beach Residence

JBR is the closest thing Dubai has to a beachfront high street. Six clusters of towers stand directly behind the sand, with The Walk running beneath them and the retail strip and Bluewaters a short distance along. Tenants are people who will pay to live on a beach and walk to dinner; owners are disproportionately short-let investors, because the holiday demand is genuine and is year-round. Everything difficult about JBR follows from that same footfall. The Walk is loud into the evening, weekend and holiday traffic through the strip is severe, and visitor parking is a long-standing complaint that residents feel daily. The towers date from the mid-2000s and are large buildings carrying a lot of shared plant, so read the service-charge history and ask what has actually been replaced, not scheduled. Sea-facing and plaza-facing units in the same tower are separate products at separate prices.