Dubai Property Market Report, August 2026: The Full Register, Transaction by Transaction

Dubai registered 15,955 property transactions in August 2026 worth AED 46.22 billion. Of those, 11,600 were sales worth AED 27.89 billion, 3,735 were mortgages worth AED 14.36 billion, and 620 were gifts worth AED 3.97 billion.

When a headline tells you Dubai did a certain number of deals last month, check which of those three it counted. Most count all of them. We separate them, because a mortgage is not a purchase and a gift is not a market price.

This report is built on a complete Dubai Land Department register export for 1 to 31 August 2026, cross checked against Bayut TruView. Every figure is dated. Nothing is modelled unless the word estimate sits next to it.

Off plan costs more per square foot than ready, not less

If you are buying off plan, check the project first. Our Dubai off plan project tracker lists all 324 projects that entered construction in 2026 with their escrow account status, the Land Department recorded build percentage, and the date it was last inspected.

This is the opposite of how off plan is usually sold. The pitch is that you buy early, cheap, and on a payment plan. The register says you buy early, smaller, and at a materially higher rate per square foot, in exchange for the payment plan and the wait.

The one honest defence of that premium is that an off plan unit in 2026 is newer stock than a ready unit in the same postcode, and newer stock commands more. That is true and it is part of the gap. It does not explain 47 per cent, and no brochure we have read discloses the gap at all.

Dubai volume and prices, twenty months side by side

The market turned in April. January and February 2026 were both ahead of 2025. March slipped. From April onward every single month came in below its 2025 counterpart, and the gap widened through the summer. Across eight months Dubai is down 20.2 per cent on transactions and 26.0 per cent on value.

Prices corrected once, in May, and have been flat since

April 2026 was the top at AED 2,041 per square foot. May came in at AED 1,826, a fall of 10.5 per cent in one month. June, July and August have all sat between AED 1,801 and AED 1,826. That is four consecutive months inside a 1.4 per cent band.

The distinction matters more than the headline. A market that fell once and then held is not the same as a market falling every month. August is 6.9 per cent below August 2025 and 11.4 per cent below the April peak, but it is 0.4 per cent above July.

What actually sold in Dubai in August 2026

Studios and one bedroom units are 62.8 per cent of every transaction in Dubai. Add two bedrooms and you have 79.6 per cent. Dubai’s transaction market is a small unit investor market. Any report that leads with villa prices is describing a market four fifths of buyers are not in.

By property type, 10,123 sales were units worth AED 16.81 billion, 793 were land worth AED 7.71 billion, and 684 were whole buildings worth AED 3.37 billion. Freehold accounted for 96.9 per cent of all sales.

Off plan against ready, by volume

Off plan is two thirds of the transactions and slightly less than half the money. Ready is a third of the transactions and slightly more than half the money. In August 2025 off plan was 76.5 per cent of residential transactions. It is now 67.1 per cent of all sales.

Dubai price bands, August 2026

70.2 per cent of Dubai transactions are under AED 2 million, and they carry 28.4 per cent of the money. At the other end, 319 sales at AED 10 million and above, which is 2.75 per cent of the count, carry AED 8.51 billion, which is 30.5 per cent of all sales value.

That is the arithmetic behind treating AED 10 million as the floor of the Dubai luxury property market rather than a marketing word. Above that line Dubai is a market of roughly 320 deals a month.

Where luxury traded

Of the 319 sales at AED 10 million and above, Business Bay took 36, Me’Aisem First 18, Palm Jebel Ali 17, the Burj Khalifa area 15, Palm Jumeirah 14 and Me’Aisem Second 13.

The single largest transaction of the month was AED 725,000,000 for a residential building in the Burj Khalifa area, registered on 27 August. That one line is 2.6 per cent of every dirham of sales value recorded in Dubai in August. It is also a reminder that a single tower trade can move a monthly average, which is why we lead with medians.

Eight of the top ten are land or a whole building. Only two are apartments. Emirates Hills alone recorded four land sales above AED 70 million during the month. At the top of this market, Dubai trades plots and towers, not homes.

Dubai communities by transaction volume

Jumeirah Village Circle shows two figures because it is the one large community with a near even split, 355 off plan sales at AED 1,586 per square foot against 346 ready sales at AED 1,230.

The Al Maktoum airport corridor is the story

Madinat Al Mataar, the district beside Al Maktoum International Airport, registered 1,833 sales worth AED 2.463 billion. That is more transactions than any other area in Dubai by a factor of two, and more value than Business Bay. All 1,727 unit sales there with a recorded area were off plan. Not one ready unit traded.

The wider Dubai South boundary shows the same thing year on year: 733 sales in August 2025 against 1,976 in August 2026, with average price per square foot up from AED 1,367 to AED 1,723. Volume up 170 per cent and price up 26 per cent, in a month when the emirate fell by a third.

Palm Jebel Ali fits the same corridor. It recorded 124 sales worth AED 775 million at a median of AED 4,376,500 and AED 3,543 per square foot, which is the highest median rate of any community in Dubai this month. Palm Jumeirah recorded 65 sales worth AED 885 million at AED 2,685 per square foot for units.

Read plainly: the most expensive square foot in Dubai in August was not on Palm Jumeirah. It was on Palm Jebel Ali, off plan, for something that has not been built.

Where the market fell hardest

Business Bay fell 80 per cent on volume and 12.5 per cent on price per square foot, the sharpest on both measures. Most of that gap is the launch calendar. August 2025 in Business Bay carried a heavy off plan launch schedule and August 2026 did not. But a community that leans on launches for four fifths of its volume is telling you how much of its market is pipeline rather than end user.

Jumeirah Village Circle is the gentler version. Volume halved while price per square foot moved only 2.8 per cent. That is a market thinning, not repricing.

The cheapest square feet in Dubai

A square foot in International City Phase 1 costs 19 per cent of a square foot on Palm Jebel Ali. Both are in Dubai and both registered over a hundred sales in the same month. Anyone quoting one average price for Dubai is averaging those two together.

The projects moving volume

Seven of the top ten projects by volume are Azizi. Add the two Raw District phases by Imtiaz and nine of the top ten are off plan units with a median under AED 800,000, concentrated in Dubai South and its neighbours.

That single fact explains the fall in Dubai’s average price better than any sentiment argument. The mix moved down market. A market whose biggest sellers are AED 600,000 to AED 800,000 units will print a lower average than one whose biggest sellers are AED 2 million units, without a single individual property having lost value.

The counterweight sits on the same list. Palm Central Private Residences on Frond N did 117 sales worth AED 603.7 million at a median of AED 4.35 million. The Greens and The Brooks at Sobha Sanctuary together did 138 sales worth AED 719.7 million. Volume moved to the bottom of the market and value stayed available at the top. Both are true in the same month.

Dubai mortgages, August 2026

Dubai registered 3,735 mortgages worth AED 14.36 billion in August at a median of AED 1,360,000. That is a mortgage for every 3.1 sales.

Note where mortgages are not. Madinat Al Mataar had 1,833 sales and does not appear on this list. Off plan units in the corridor are being bought on developer payment plans, not bank finance. That is worth knowing, because a payment plan is a commitment to a developer and a mortgage is a commitment to a bank, and only one of them was underwritten by someone checking the buyer’s income.

The rhythm of the register

Tuesday is the heaviest registration day in Dubai. Sunday is effectively closed, averaging nine transactions. The single busiest day of August was Monday 17 August with 707 sales. The quietest working day was Friday 28 August with 52, which was the public holiday for the Prophet’s birthday and produced a three day weekend.

A month with an extra public holiday loses roughly 490 registrations against the same month without one, which is 4.2 per cent of August. Some of the year on year gap is calendar, not market.

Dubai rent, August 2026

Dubai registered 43,273 rental contracts in August 2026 at an average of AED 94,833 a year, which is AED 84 per square foot per year.

Set that against our own registered sale figure of AED 1,705 per square foot and the crude gross yield across all Dubai stock is 4.9 per cent. Set it against ready stock only, at AED 1,421 per square foot, and it is 5.9 per cent. Set it against off plan at AED 1,745 and it is 4.8 per cent, but that number is meaningless because an off plan unit earns no rent at all until handover.

The honest version is the middle one. A ready Dubai apartment bought at the registered median rate and let at the registered average rent grosses about 5.9 per cent before service charges, agency fees, void periods and maintenance. Our community yield figures divide registered rent by registered ready sale prices in the same community and never by an off plan launch price, which is why they come out below the numbers most brokers advertise.

What we think this means

For a seller in Dubai

You are selling into a market with a third fewer buyers than last August, at prices per square foot that have been flat for four months. Flat is the operative word. May did the repricing. If your asking price is anchored to a first quarter 2026 comparable, you are roughly 11 per cent above where the market clears. Reprice once and properly rather than chasing it down in stages.

For a buyer in Dubai

Look at ready stock before you look at off plan. The register says finished apartments traded 23 per cent cheaper per square foot across Dubai and up to 47 per cent cheaper in Business Bay, and they were larger. If a payment plan is the reason you are choosing off plan, price the plan properly. You are paying for it in the rate per square foot, and the discount you are giving up is bigger than most payment plans are worth.

For an investor

Two clean signals. First, Dubai South and Palm Jebel Ali are the only unambiguous growth in the emirate and both sit on the Al Maktoum corridor, which makes them a concentrated bet on one piece of infrastructure delivering. Size that accordingly. Second, ready stock at AED 1,421 per square foot against an AED 84 per square foot registered rent is a better arithmetic starting point than anything on a launch brochure.

For a developer

Nine of the ten highest volume projects in August sold below AED 800,000 a unit. The pipeline has moved to price. Anyone launching above AED 2,000 per square foot outside a waterfront or a branded scheme is launching into the thinnest part of the market.

What we are not claiming

• August is not fully settled. Measured on two separate exports of the same register, one on 19 August and one on 2 September, the data moved 1.9 per cent net over the same 18 day window, with 300 transactions added and 169 removed. The register revises in both directions. Expect August to drift by a point or two, not more.
• Our register totals and the Bayut TruView series will not reconcile exactly. Ours is all usages including land and commercial. Theirs is residential property with an outlier cleanup applied. For August our residential sales are 11,299 worth AED 24.04 billion against their 11,414 worth about AED 25.2 billion, a gap of about 1 per cent on count and 5 per cent on value. Close enough to trust both. Far enough apart that you should never mix them in one sentence.
• Our price per square foot is calculated from the recorded actual area on each transaction. It is a median across unit sales, so it is not directly comparable to Bayut’s mean. Our own mean is AED 1,830, which sits within 1.2 per cent of their AED 1,808.
• The off plan premium is a median comparison, not a like for like on the same building. Newer stock explains part of it. It does not explain 47 per cent, and we have not seen any developer disclose the gap.
• Community year on year comparisons are volume and rate, not product mix. Business Bay falling 80 per cent is largely a launch calendar difference and we say so rather than let it read as a crash.
• Nothing here is a forecast. We have not modelled September and we will not.

How to check every number here

The transaction level figures come from the Dubai Land Department open data portal, dubailand.gov.ae, under Open Data, Real Estate Data, Transactions, exported for 1 to 31 August 2026 with all filters set to All. That export is 15,955 rows. The monthly series and the community year on year comparison come from bayut.com under Property Market Analysis, Transactions, by setting the date range to the month named. Both sources are public and free.

We publish this report monthly. If a figure on this page is ever wrong we would rather you told us than assumed we knew. The same standard applies to our own deals, which is why our track record page lists individual named transactions rather than a headline number.

Cresco Real Estate LLC. RERA ORN 34288. Report compiled 2 September 2026 from a Dubai Land Department register export covering 1 to 31 August 2026 and from Bayut TruView, both pulled the same day. This report is market information. It is not investment advice and it is not a valuation of any specific property.