Dubai's Median Off-Plan Price Fell 39% This Year. The Price Per Square Foot Fell 7%.

Are Dubai Property Prices Actually Falling?

Dubai home prices are being reported as falling year-on-year for the first time since 2021. The headline is a median, and a median moves for two completely different reasons: the same home costing less, or people buying smaller homes. Those are opposite conclusions for anyone deciding whether to buy, and the headline figure cannot tell them apart. The Land Department transaction register can. We pooled every recorded off-plan sale in 2026 — 79,459 rows with a price, January to 7 September — and took the median once per month over the whole pool. Between January and August, the last complete month, the median price fell 38.9%. Over the same months the median price per square foot fell 7.3%, and the median home shrank from 878 square feet to 703. In June the most-bought home in Dubai stopped being a one-bedroom and became a studio. That single change accounts for most of the number in the headline.

By Certified Poor · Updated 07 Sep 2026

What the register actually shows, month by month

Each figure below is the median of every recorded off-plan sale in that month, pooled. Medians are not additive — the median of a set of project medians is not the market median — so nothing here is averaged up from smaller numbers. The pool is taken once, per month.

January: 11,296 sales, median AED 1,845,399, AED 1,872 per square foot, median size 878 sqft.
April: 10,409 sales, median AED 1,666,888, AED 1,934 per square foot, 832 sqft.
June: 10,164 sales, median AED 1,095,535, AED 1,725 per square foot, 689 sqft.
July: 9,883 sales, median AED 1,059,059, AED 1,740 per square foot, 678 sqft.
August: 7,957 sales, median AED 1,127,950, AED 1,736 per square foot, 703 sqft.

The headline number and the per-square-foot number disagree by a factor of five. April is the clearest single month: the median price had already fallen from January, while the price per square foot was at its high for the year. Buyers were paying more per foot for less house.

Median price fell 38.9%. Median price per square foot fell 7.3%. Same rows, same months.

The composition changed in June

Through the first five months of the year the most commonly bought off-plan home in Dubai was a one-bedroom apartment, taking between 33% and 40% of recorded sales each month. In June that flipped: studios became the single largest category at 41%, then 42% in July and 39% in August.

The median home shrank alongside it, from 878 square feet in January to 678 in July — a fall of 22.8% at the low point. A market where the typical purchase loses a fifth of its floor area will report a falling median price even if not one developer drops a price.

This is what economists call a mix shift, and it is not a subtle statistical footnote. It is the difference between 'homes are getting cheaper' and 'buyers are buying less home', and only the second of those is clearly supported by the register.

In June the most-bought home in Dubai became a studio, for the first time this year.

What we cannot tell you, and why

The reported claim is year-on-year, and we cannot test it. The Land Department's open transaction gateway returns no rows at all for 2025 or any earlier year — we queried August 2025 directly on 7 September 2026 and it returned HTTP 200 with zero records. So nothing here confirms or refutes a comparison against 2025. Anyone claiming to have done so from this source has not.

What we can do is measure within 2026, across every month, from the complete set of rows. That is what this is.

Three further limits worth stating plainly. This covers off-plan sales only, not ready homes, so it is a segment of the market rather than the whole of it. September is excluded from every comparison above because it is seven days old and holds 1,853 sales against a monthly norm near 10,000 — a partial month is not a data point. And a mix shift does not rule out genuine price softening underneath it: the 7.3% per-square-foot fall is real, it is simply five times smaller than the headline.

The gateway returns zero rows for 2025. No year-on-year comparison is possible from this source.

What this means if you are buying

If you are reading a falling-price headline as a discount on the home you already wanted, the register does not support that. Per square foot, an off-plan home in Dubai costs about 7% less than it did in January. That is a softening, not a correction, and it is well within the range these figures have moved before.

What has genuinely changed is what is being sold. Studio and small one-bedroom stock has taken over the transaction count, which usually means launches are concentrated at the affordable end and that is where the inventory is. If you want a larger unit, you are shopping in the part of the market that has moved least on price.

The practical step is to stop comparing headline medians entirely and compare price per square foot for your own unit size, in your own area. A median across every home in a city answers no question you actually have. Every project page here carries the median actually paid and the price per square foot recorded for that specific building.

Compare price per square foot for your unit size. A city-wide median answers no question you have.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are Dubai property prices falling in 2026?

Per square foot, mildly. The median price per square foot for recorded off-plan sales fell 7.3% between January and August 2026, from AED 1,872 to AED 1,736. The median transaction price fell far more — 38.9% — but most of that is because buyers moved to smaller homes rather than because homes became cheaper.

Why is the median price down 39% but the price per square foot only down 7%?

Because the median home shrank. In January the median recorded off-plan purchase was 878 square feet; by July it was 678, and in June studios overtook one-bedroom apartments as the most commonly bought home for the first time this year. When the typical purchase loses a fifth of its floor area, the median price falls even if no developer changes a price. This is a mix shift, not a price cut.

Does this disprove the reports of a year-on-year fall?

No, and we are not claiming it does. We cannot test a year-on-year comparison from this source at all: the Dubai Land Department's open transaction gateway returns zero rows for 2025 and earlier, which we verified directly on 7 September 2026. Our analysis is within 2026 only. It shows that the widely quoted drop in median price is mostly composition, which is worth knowing whichever way the annual figure lands.

How many transactions is this based on?

79,459 recorded off-plan sales with a price, from 1 January to 7 September 2026 — the complete set from the Land Department register for that window, not a sample. Each monthly median is taken once over all rows in that month, because medians are not additive and cannot be averaged from smaller groups.

Does this cover ready homes as well as off-plan?

No. This is off-plan only. Ready-home resale is a separate market with its own dynamics, and a headline covering all homes is not directly comparable to these figures.

Why is September left out of the comparisons?

Because it is incomplete. At the time of reading, September held 1,853 recorded sales against a monthly norm near 10,000. A partial month is not a data point, and comparing it to a full one would manufacture a trend that is not there.

What should I actually compare instead?

Price per square foot for your own unit size, in your own area. A city-wide median across every home answers no question a buyer actually has. Every project page on this site shows the median price actually paid and the price per square foot recorded for that specific building.

Where does this data come from?

The Dubai Land Department's open transaction register, off-plan residential sales, queried month by month and read on 7 September 2026. Full figures and method are on our Dubai off-plan statistics page.