Dubai Sports City

Dubai Sports City does exactly what its name says, and its residents are usually there on purpose.

The community is arranged around real sporting infrastructure — the international cricket stadium, a championship golf course, and a set of training academies — and the result is a place with more open space and larger apartment layouts than an equivalent budget will buy you closer to the centre.

That value is real, but it is not evenly distributed. Sports City has some well-run buildings and some that have had genuine problems with maintenance and with service charges, and the difference shows up in the annual cost of owning rather than in the purchase price. It is the clearest example on this list of a community where the tower matters more than the postcode.