arithma wroteSomething to consider: House prices are inflated because your peers (or people who were in your shoes) decided to leave the country, get more money, and then get back here in Lebanon to settle.
You're at a disadvantage just by staying here.
Exactly.
That said, there's an unfortunate truth that we have to realize. In capitalism, not everyone is supposed or entitled (by some unwritten law) to own a house and live a comfortable during his lifetime.
Becoming an owner of a property has throughout the ages been considered a big deal. Most people never had that and never will.
Even in the west (the American dream? it sometimes just stays a dream) it's the same situation. Maybe in socialist countries it is different (France?) but i'm not too familiar with them so I can't give my opinion.
In Lebanon, all people holding a university degree believe they are now entitled to ownership of a house and living a comfortable lives (this thinking actually somewhat works in the west because not many people get university degrees and unemployment numbers have for most of the time stayed in the single digit numbers; so degree holders were being scooped up quicker).
One other thing to realize, in Lebanon the rent prices (% of property value) are one of the lowest in the world. So if you crunch the numbers, it would be more beneficial to you to rent a house in Lebanon, while financing a house in Dubai and renting it out for a much higher % of property value (almost double that of Lebanon). But most Lebanese have too much nationalism and sense of self-entitlement to think economically.
Personal note: I worked in Dubai real estate. Before end 2008, the rental prices were 10% (yearly) of the property value. i.e. a 300,000$ house would be rented out for 30,000$ a year. The owner of course pays the service/maintenance fees but still the rent would be really high. During that time in Lebanon, the rent was 3-5% of property value.
After the end 2008 crisis, Dubai rental prices became around 6% of property value, while Lebanon hovered around 5%.
In 2013, Dubai rental prices shot up to around 7.5-8.5% (and still showing signs of increasing) while Lebanon is still hovering around 5%.
(Take advantage of the low rental prices in Lebanon to save the money you were going to use to finance your house and invest it into something that will generate even more income so that you compress the time it takes you later to buy a house and therefore pay less interest rates. In the west, smart investments are the key to accelerate starting up your life; some investments are not smart, there's alot of personal touch involved, no one is entitled to comfy life just because they are X country passport holders).