Has the Dubai property market turned?
Sales are down 18% on last year and the median price is down 11%. Here is what 1.77 million registered transactions actually show.
Yes, on volume and on price, and it is not close.
Comparing like for like, 1 January to 3 September in each year, using registered transactions from the Dubai Land Department:
| Sales | Total value | Median price | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 112,818 | AED 331.3bn | AED 1,550,000 |
| 2025 | 139,601 | AED 448.4bn | AED 1,600,000 |
| 2026 | 113,792 | AED 355.4bn | AED 1,422,450 |
Against the same period last year: 18.5% fewer sales, 20.7% less value, and a median price 11.1% lower.
The more useful way to read that
"Down 18%" invites a panic that the numbers do not support. Look at 2024 in the same table.
2026 has 113,792 sales against 2024's 112,818. Volume has not collapsed. It has returned to where it was two years ago, which was itself a record at the time.
The honest sentence is not that the market fell. It is that 2025 was the peak, and it was not the new normal. Anyone whose plan assumed 2025 volumes continuing was extrapolating from a single year.
Prices are still rising, just barely
Median price per square metre, residential, by year:
| Year | AED per sqm | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 9,785 | −5.6% |
| 2021 | 10,888 | +11.3% |
| 2022 | 13,129 | +20.6% |
| 2023 | 14,957 | +13.9% |
| 2024 | 16,475 | +10.1% |
| 2025 | 17,870 | +8.5% |
| 2026 | 18,422 | +3.1% |
Two things at once, and they are easy to confuse.
Price per square metre is still going up, at about 3% this year. The median transaction price is going down, by 11%. Those are not contradictory: buyers are purchasing smaller and cheaper properties, not paying less per square metre for the same ones.
That distinction matters. A headline saying "Dubai prices fall 11%" describes the mix of what sold, not a discount on any particular home.
What is actually driving it
Off-plan has taken over. It was 44% of sales in 2022. It is 68.5% in 2026. Off-plan units are typically smaller and cheaper at the point of sale, and they now make up two thirds of the market. That alone moves the median down without any individual property becoming cheaper.
Affordability improved. Sales below AED 1m fell from 43.5% in 2020 to 27.8% in 2025, then rose back to 33.1% in 2026. More of the market is transacting at the cheaper end than at any point since 2022.
Mortgages are returning. Mortgages per 100 sales ran at 43 in 2018, halved to 20 by 2022, and held there through 2025. In 2026 they are at 23.7. In a cash-heavy market, more borrowing is usually a sign of end-users rather than investors.
Taken together, these describe a market rotating toward smaller, cheaper, more often-financed, more often off-plan purchases. Not a crash. A change in who is buying and what they are buying.
What this does not tell you
- It is not a forecast. This is what has been registered, to 3 September 2026. Nobody knows what the next quarter does, and anyone confidently telling you is selling something.
- Dubai-wide medians hide everything local. Villas and apartments have diverged sharply; four-bedroom homes rose 40% since 2024 while two-bedroom homes fell 2%. Your community is not the median.
- A median is not an index, and the two official sources disagree by about ten points. Which one is quoted at you changes the story.
- 2026 is a partial year, to 3 September, which is why every comparison here is cut to the same date rather than against a full year.
- A lower median is not a discount. If you are buying one specific property, the only number that matters is what comparable units in that building actually transacted at.
Method
Dubai Land Department registered transactions, downloaded 4 September 2026: 1,771,170 records from 2000 to 3 September 2026, after excluding 5,760 rows carrying impossible dates.
Sales figures cover all registered sales. Price-per-square-metre figures are residential only and clip to 500–200,000 AED per sqm to remove outliers. Every number above is produced by a script kept with this site, so the arithmetic can be checked rather than taken on trust.