Where Dubai's July Off-Plan Money Actually Went

The number, and why ours differs slightly

We count 9,621 recorded off-plan sales in July 2026 with a combined value of AED 15.96 billion, pulled from the Dubai Land Department's open transaction register with the off-plan flag set and the procedure group restricted to sales. The figure circulating this week is roughly AED 16.8 billion, about 5% higher. We are not going to pretend that gap is a scandal, because it almost certainly is not one. Different cuts of the same register produce different totals: whether gifts and grants are counted alongside sales, whether transactions registered after the month closed are included, and which day the data was pulled all move the number by a percent or two. Both figures come from the same source. What neither figure tells you, and what the register can, is the distribution behind it. A monthly total is a single number describing 9,621 separate decisions across 896 projects, and the shape of those decisions is far more useful to a buyer than their sum. The rest of this page is that shape.

Two Dubais, one month

Rank the districts by value and the top two describe completely different markets. Madinat Al Mataar, the Dubai South district around Al Maktoum International Airport, recorded 2,277 off-plan sales in July worth AED 2.24 billion — 14% of the entire emirate's off-plan value for the month, and by some distance the largest single concentration. The average transaction there was AED 984,600. Jumeirah Second recorded 21 sales worth AED 810 million: 5.1% of the month's value from 0.2% of its transactions. The average transaction was AED 38,422,675. One district needed 2,277 buyers to reach AED 2.24 billion. The other needed 21 to reach AED 810 million. These are not variations within a market, they are two separate markets that happen to file into the same register, and almost every published Dubai statistic blends them into a single average that describes neither. Below the top two the pattern continues. Business Bay: 155 deals, AED 740 million, AED 4.76 million average. Al Thanyah Fifth: 280 deals at AED 2.52 million average. Then the volume districts — Jabal Ali Industrial Second with 587 deals at AED 911,067 average, Downtown Jabal Ali with 447 at AED 1.17 million, Jumeirah Village Circle with 415 at AED 1.23 million. The southern corridor and JVC supply the transactions; a handful of coastal and central postcodes supply a disproportionate share of the money.

Why the average Dubai price figure misleads

This distribution has a direct practical consequence, and it is the reason to be wary of any headline citing an average Dubai property price. In July the mean off-plan transaction was AED 1,658,598. The median — the middle transaction, with as many above as below — was AED 1,045,000. The mean sits 59% above the median, and the reason is exactly the distribution above: a small number of very large transactions in a few districts drag the average upward while describing almost nobody's actual purchase. If you are budgeting from an average Dubai price you are budgeting from a figure inflated by twenty-one deals in Jumeirah Second. The median is closer to the market most buyers are actually in, and even that flattens the two-market split. The room breakdown makes the point again. Of 9,621 transactions, 4,127 were studios and 3,069 were one-bedrooms — 74.8% of the month's volume between them. Two-bedrooms accounted for 1,413, three-bedrooms 409 and four-bedrooms 191. Dubai's off-plan market by transaction count is overwhelmingly a small-apartment market, whatever the value totals imply. When you read that Dubai recorded billions in a month, the typical thing being bought is a studio for around a million dirhams.

The projects that moved the money

Concentration at project level is high but not extreme: the top ten developments account for AED 3.46 billion, 21.7% of the month, out of 896 projects with at least one recorded sale. Eltiera Views led on value at AED 600 million across 247 transactions. Rosewood Residences Dubai took AED 450 million from just 15. Azizi Venice 6 recorded 406 sales worth AED 370 million, and Azizi Venice 14 recorded 455 worth AED 310 million — the Dubai South machine doing what it does. Raw District by Imtiaz appears twice, its CR phase at AED 370 million across 252 sales and its R phase at AED 350 million across 318, which together made it one of the highest-volume sellers of the month; it had recorded no sales at all before July. Palm Central Private Residences Frond N took AED 310 million from 61 transactions. Read those side by side and the two-market split is visible inside the top ten itself: Rosewood at 15 deals and Azizi Venice 14 at 455 deals sit within AED 140 million of each other in total value. The volume names are selling a different product to a different buyer at roughly a thirtieth of the price per transaction, and both are legitimate businesses. The mistake is treating a figure that averages them as describing either one.

What this cannot tell you

Three limits, stated because the value of this page is that anyone can check it. The register records the price paid, not the price asked, so nothing here shows what discount a buyer negotiated. Each off-plan row carries a single procedure type, so a developer first sale cannot be separated from an investor reselling before handover — a district with a high average could be seeing genuine luxury launches or active resale, and we cannot distinguish them. And there is no buyer nationality field in this dataset, so any claim about foreign versus local money is not something this register can support, whoever is making it. Everything above comes from the Dubai Land Department's open transaction register for July 2026, with the off-plan flag set and procedure group restricted to sales, aggregated by project and district and recomputed rather than taken from any secondary report. The method and its limits are set out in full in how we read the DLD register.