little town, it's a quiet village

The two biggest complaints from any Dubai citizen will undoubtedly be:
1. Traffic
2. Real Estate
not necessarily in that order

For me- numero uno is real estate. Especially now that I am neck-deep in the throws of it once again. My biggest gripes (among a long list):

1. The year rent up front. I have never heard of any other country where it is the norm to force people to pay the entire year of rent up front. Its ridiculous. I mean, I understand where it came from- when the expats started to come (and there were like 10 locals who obviously have no housing issues) they were all highly in demand and their companies paid their housing. I imagine its a lot less hassle for companies to pay one check every 12 months than worry about monthly payments. Yeah, I get it. But time to change the system already!
This means that basically, anyone who can not get their company to advance them the check for yearly rent has to either sublease from someone who will let them pay monthly, usually for a room in their house (illegal, but everyone does it), or share a room with 12 other people, or find the random apartments that allow you to pay monthly but pay at least 2x (usually more) the already jacked-up prices.
Ridiculous.

2. The prices. They are soaring out of control. The one law they had to control it (which wasn't a very good one in the first place), where an owner could only increase the rent by 15%/year IF the tenant was renewing, has apparently now been abolished. Clearly no one with any authority has any interest in controlling the inflation (could be because they are the ones benefiting from it).

3. The real estate agents themselves. I've met a few who are reputable- but most that I encounter are sleazy and really never do any work. Perhaps that's because I rent and the good ones are in the buying, don't know. In the last month, Shady and I have probably spent a good 20 hours (I think I'm under-estimating) driving around searching for signs 'to let' and scouring newspapers and websites. No one has been helping us at all. When we finally find a place, the only work the 'real estate agent' (I use that term loosely) will have done is MAYBE met us to unlock the door so we can look at the place, but sometimes not even that. And yet, we will end up forking over at least $1,500 to this person- for doing absolutely nothing.
Well I guess if anyone's looking for a job- here's a lucrative and easy one for you.

Help- someone- get me to civilization- Quick!