@Wunae - "As long as people keep renting partitioned villas, rents will keep going up." are you hearing yourself talk when you said this? really?! you think, if there is affordable villas and flats expats will still go for partitioned ones? THINK hard, my friend. I guess you are drowsy of the summer heat that you forgot to think things thru before you commented on this. All I can say is this, now that the Oil and Gas industry is suffering economics losses, do you think villa and flat owners can still manage to pay the mortgage the bank has set if there are no one renting it? More or less on an economic standpoint, regression will eventually show up. Market prices are driven by supply and demand, meaning if there are more demand, the prices go up ... make sense, right? but with the oversupply skyrocketing rents of villas and flats out there, do you think there is sooooo much demand that they can just raised the prices because they feel the demand is high? wow! where did they find the people who are doing surveys on current market values nowadays? I can safely say that there are huge demand for "Affordable Housing."