How mortgages work in the UAE.

Three decisions, in this order

The first is loan to value: the share of the property price a bank may lend. The Central Bank sets the ceiling and it is applied to the lower of the price you agreed and the bank's own valuation.

The second is affordability. Your total monthly debt repayments cannot exceed 50 percent of your gross monthly income, and the bank tests that against a rate higher than the one you are offered, not the one you pay.

The third is the term, which is capped at 25 years. Nothing in the regulation sets a maximum age, although almost every bank applies one of its own.

• RegulationTotal monthly debt repayments cannot exceed 50 percent of gross monthly income. Article 3.1.
• RegulationThe longest a UAE mortgage can run is 25 years. Article 3.3.
• Lender practiceSalaried borrowers usually have to finish repaying by 65, self employed by 70. Article 3.3 sets no age at all.

What the caps do not decide

Two applicants with the same salary and the same property can get materially different answers, because the caps set the ceiling and the bank's own policy sets everything under it: how it treats commission, a bonus, rental income, a recent job change, an existing liability, or a second applicant.

That is the part a calculator cannot see. A calculator applies the rules, which is genuinely useful for a first sense of scale. It does not know which bank on a panel of more than twenty reads your particular circumstances most generously, and that difference is usually worth more than the rate.

The order things actually happen

Pre approval first, which is a bank's conditional view of you before a property is involved. Then the property and the valuation, which is where the loan to value cap is applied for real. Then the final offer, the signing, and the transfer at the Land Department.

Most files that go wrong go wrong at the valuation or at a liability nobody mentioned early. Both are easier to solve before an offer is agreed than after.