"Do I actually own it?" is the right first question in any cross-border purchase, and the answer is less binary than brochures suggest. Ownership is a bundle of rights, and each city hands you a different bundle.

England and Wales still split the world into freehold and leasehold. Houses generally trade freehold: you own the building and the land indefinitely. Flats overwhelmingly trade leasehold: you own a lease — commonly 99 to 999 years — over a unit in someone else's building, pay a service charge, and hand the asset back when the lease expires unless you extend. Reform has abolished ground rents on new leases and simplified extensions, but the arithmetic still matters: below roughly 80 unexpired years, value erodes and lenders hesitate. Ask three things of any London flat: years remaining, service charge history, and whether the building has a share of freehold.

Dubai looks like the opposite of the leasehold world, but the geography is the point. Foreign buyers take full freehold title only inside designated areas gazetted under Law 7 of 2006 — Business Bay, Dubai Marina, Downtown, JVC and dozens more. Inside those zones your title is registered at the Dubai Land Department and is genuinely perpetual; outside them, foreign ownership is generally not available. Abu Dhabi followed in 2019, amending its property law so that non-GCC nationals hold full freehold within investment zones such as Saadiyat, Yas and Reem.

Most of continental Europe never adopted leasehold at all. In Portugal, Spain and Italy an apartment buyer takes full ownership of the unit plus a share of the building's common parts, governed by a condominium regime — propriedade horizontal, propiedad horizontal, condominio. You pay community fees and follow the building's rules, but no lease runs down and no ground landlord exists. Germany's version, Wohnungseigentum, works the same way; check only that the land is not held under the rarer Erbbaurecht (heritable building right), which behaves like a long lease.

The United States is the simplest of the five: a Miami condominium is fee-simple ownership — perpetual title to the unit, an undivided share of the common elements, and an HOA that bills monthly and must approve buyers in some buildings.

None of these structures should scare you off; all of them price in. Leasehold flats trade at discounts that reflect their lease length. Freehold-zone apartments in Dubai carry no such decay. The mistake is not buying leasehold — it is paying freehold prices for a bundle of rights that quietly expires.