By Yousef Jalili, Founder, Jalili Real Estate
Off-plan accounted for 68% of Dubai’s property sales in the first half of 2026. Ready homes accounted for 51% of the money. Both figures are correct, they describe the same market, and adding them together is the most common mistake made with Dubai transaction data.
Someone showed me a market summary last week with two numbers side by side: off-plan 68%, secondary 51%. Their question was reasonable — that comes to 119%, so which one is wrong?
Neither. They are measured against different denominators. One counts deals; the other counts dirhams. Dubai is a market where those two questions have genuinely different answers, and understanding why is most of what you need to read the data sensibly.
Two engines, two units of measurement
According to Dubai Land Department figures for the first half of 2026, property sales — off-plan plus completed, excluding mortgages and gifts — came to AED 286.44 billion across 86,000 transactions. Split by type:
| Transactions | Share of count | Value | Share of value | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Off-plan | 58,840 | 68% | AED 139.75bn | 49% |
| Completed (ready) | 27,160 | 32% | AED 146.69bn | 51% |
| Total | 86,000 | 100% | AED 286.44bn | 100% |
Each column sums to 100% on its own. The 68% and the 51% sit in different columns, which is why they cannot be added.
The structural point underneath is more interesting than the arithmetic. Off-plan is where the transactions are. Ready property is where the capital is. Off-plan generated 2.2 times as many deals and still moved less money, because the average completed transaction is far larger — roughly AED 5.4 million against AED 2.4 million for off-plan across the half.
Some of that gap is composition rather than pricing: the completed-property figure includes land and commercial assets, which lift the average. But the direction holds when you look at residential activity alone, and it held again in July, when the average off-plan sale was about AED 1.7 million and the average ready sale about AED 4.4 million.
The headline number contains more than you think
The figure most often quoted for H1 2026 is AED 419.94 billion across 112,850 transactions. That is the Land Department’s total for all real estate transactions, and it is not a sales figure. It bundles three different activities:
- Sales — AED 286.44bn, the number that describes the buying and selling market.
- Mortgages — refinancing and lending against property already owned.
- Gifts — transfers between family members and related parties, at no market price.
A mortgage registration is not a purchase. A gift transfer is not a purchase. When a headline uses the larger number to describe demand, roughly a third of what it is describing is not demand at all. If you are comparing two periods, or two sources, the first thing to establish is which of these three baskets each one is counting.
The same discipline applies to the year we are measuring against. Dubai recorded more than 270,000 transactions worth around AED 917 billion across 2025 on the all-transactions basis; on a sales-only basis, the same year was 214,912 transactions worth AED 682.5 billion. Both are real. They answer different questions.
The direction of travel
Dubai is smaller in 2026 than it was in 2025, and it is worth being plain about that rather than presenting a decline as a plateau.
On the residential side, Cavendish Maxwell puts H1 2026 at 79,281 transactions worth AED 221.4 billion, against 91,973 worth AED 262.6 billion a year earlier — volumes down about 14%, value down about 16%. The all-transactions total tells the same story more quietly: AED 419.94 billion this year against roughly AED 431 billion in H1 2025.
Prices have moved later and less violently than volumes, which is the usual sequence. REIDIN’s index had residential prices 1.86% higher year on year in June 2026, but falling 1.24% month on month, with annual growth decelerating from around 11.8% in January to 3.6% by May. ValuStrat’s index is more bearish still, putting June annual growth at 0.1% and the index roughly 10% below its late-February peak.
The two indices disagree about whether prices are still up over twelve months. They agree on the shape: growth has stopped and monthly readings have turned negative. Anyone telling you Dubai prices are simply still rising is quoting a year-on-year number and hoping you do not ask about the last quarter.
Rental income has held up better than capital growth. Engel & Völkers puts average gross residential yield at 6.58% in July 2026 — 6.9% for apartments, 5.1% for townhouses, 4.5% for villas. Those are gross figures, and as we have written before, the net number after service charges, cooling, management and vacancy is typically a quarter to a third lower.
The supply number that needs a second look
Around 83,000 residential units are scheduled for handover in Dubai during 2026. That figure travels widely, and on its own it is misleading.
Scheduled is not delivered. Cavendish Maxwell recorded 24,800 completions in the first half of the year against a full-year schedule of roughly 83,000, which implies a realistic outcome somewhere in the region of 39,000 to 48,000 — roughly half the announced number. Dubai has slipped its completion schedule every year for which records exist, and 2026 is not shaping up to be the exception.
This matters in both directions. If you are worried about an oversupply shock, the scheduled figure overstates it. If you are relying on a specific building completing on a specific date to start earning rent, the scheduled figure also overstates that.
What this means when you are actually buying
The volume-versus-value split is not trivia. It maps onto a real choice.
Off-plan is the cheaper way in. A smaller deposit, instalments spread across construction, and entry pricing on a building that does not exist yet. What you are buying is a schedule and a developer’s track record, and your money earns nothing until handover. In a market where completions consistently run behind schedule, that waiting period is the risk, not the price.
Completed property costs more per transaction and demands the full amount up front or a mortgage. In exchange, you can stand in the actual unit, read the actual service charge, see the actual building management, and let it from the month you take the keys. The reason it takes 51% of the money on 32% of the deals is that this is where the larger cheques go.
Most sensible portfolios in this market hold both. The mistake is not choosing one — it is choosing one because a percentage in a report seemed to point that way, without checking what that percentage was a percentage of.
If you are weighing that mix for your own portfolio, arrange a consultation.
Three questions to ask of any Dubai market figure
- Sales, or all transactions? The gap between AED 286bn and AED 420bn in the same half-year is mortgages and gifts.
- Count, or value? Off-plan leads one and trails the other. A source that gives you only one is giving you half the market.
- Residential, or everything? Land and commercial assets sit inside the broader totals and lift every average they touch.
Answer those three and most of the apparent contradictions in Dubai market reporting resolve themselves — including the 68% and the 51% that started this.
Frequently asked questions
Why do off-plan and secondary market shares add up to more than 100% in Dubai reports?
Because they are measured against different denominators. Off-plan was 68% of Dubai’s sales transactions by count in H1 2026, while completed property was 51% by value. Count and value are separate columns, and each sums to 100% on its own, so the two percentages cannot be added.
What is the difference between Dubai’s total transaction value and its sales value?
The Dubai Land Department’s headline total for H1 2026 was AED 419.94 billion across 112,850 transactions, which includes sales, mortgage registrations and gift transfers. Sales alone were AED 286.44 billion across 86,000 transactions. Mortgages and gifts are not purchases, so the larger figure overstates buying activity by roughly a third.
Are Dubai property prices still rising in 2026?
Annual growth has largely stopped and monthly readings have turned negative. REIDIN recorded residential prices 1.86% higher year on year in June 2026 but down 1.24% month on month, with annual growth slowing from about 11.8% in January to 3.6% by May. ValuStrat’s index puts June annual growth at 0.1% and the index around 10% below its late-February peak.
Figures in this article are drawn from Dubai Land Department data for H1 and July 2026, Cavendish Maxwell, REIDIN, ValuStrat and Engel & Völkers, as published to 13 August 2026. Market data is revised; treat any single figure as a reading rather than a fact. This article is general information about market structure and is not investment advice.