I looked at more than 50 apartments before our last move. There are a gazillion apartments here that range from cooler than you can imagine (as below)
to just bizarrely bad, but they're all either great location, good price and CRAP, seriously the most bizarre floor plans you can imagine, or they're awesome and too much. Or they're too much AND they're crap. We ended up surrendering location for price. Our deal breakers? balcony (hubs isn't allowed to smoke inside), dishwasher, square or rectangular bedroom, minimal exterior noise, reasonably large square footage and at least one electrical outlet in the bathroom. We had to buy extra kitchen cabinets and a couple closets from IKEA, and medicine cabinets and towel racks because the brand new apartment was a little shy on the finishes, but the place is big and cheap, by Dubai standards anyway.