Dubai Real Estate Market Report — 2023

Dubai Real Estate Market Report – 2023

Dubai's property market ended 2023 at an all-out record. Taking every property type together, 133,638 transactions traded for AED 412.29 billion, at a citywide median of AED 1,371/sqft. Focusing on the tradable apartment, villa and commercial (AVC) segments, the market booked 129,647 deals worth AED 334.69 billion — a +39% gain in volume and a +52% gain in value over 2022.

Headline volume and value alike set fresh records for the ten-year series, stretching Dubai's streak of double-digit annual growth to a third year in a row. The expansion was wide-ranging but firmly apartment-led, and it owed more to climbing deal counts than to climbing prices.

Headline figures

The market in context

Apartment, Villa and Commercial transactions and value over the last seven years to 2023:

Year-on-year performance by category

Apartments drove the expansion. With 99,838 deals — the largest annual volume in the ten-year series — the segment picked up 32,478 transactions on 2022, a +48% jump that pushed apartment value +53% higher to AED 199.35 billion. Tellingly, this was about volume rather than price: the median apartment stayed flat at AED 1,526/sqft (0% year on year, yet still +27% above 2014), and the median ticket actually softened 1% to AED 1,237,020. Buyers turned out in numbers, but they were not paying more per foot.

Villas ran the opposite way on price. Volume grew a comparatively restrained +11% to 25,903 — a ten-year record in itself, and 2,641 deals ahead of 2022 — yet value surged +51% to AED 128.44 billion because pricing shouldered the load. The median villa climbed to AED 1,125/sqft, up +18% over the year and +53% above 2014, the highest price per square foot in the series, while the median ticket rose 33% to AED 2,858,000.

Commercial, the smallest segment, quietly delivered its best year as well. Its 3,906 deals marked the largest annual volume since 2014 (up +31%, adding 935 transactions), and value grew +47% to AED 6.90 billion. As with villas, the gains were price-driven: the commercial median reached AED 1,087/sqft, up +26% and a ten-year high — though the comparison with 2014 stands at only +1%, a reminder of how flat this segment stayed for most of the decade. The median commercial ticket rose 27% to AED 1,050,000.

Every category, including plots and buildings

Outside the tradable AVC segments, land weighed heavily on the headline total. Plot sales produced AED 77.33 billion from 3,985 transactions — the third-largest value pool of any property type, trailing only apartments and villas — at a median AED 400/sqft and a median ticket of AED 5,200,000, a reflection of busy land banking and master-development activity. Whole-building sales, on the other hand, were trivial in number: just six deals worth AED 267.61 million.

Primary versus resale

The primary (off-plan) market set the pace for the year, capturing 60% of volume and 62% of value — 77,624 developer sales worth AED 207.95 billion. Resale supplied the other 52,023 deals and AED 126.74 billion, or 40% of volume but a marginally smaller 38% of value. That two-point gap points to secondary-market activity leaning slightly more toward lower-priced stock than new launches did.

Where the activity was

Marsa Dubai topped the value table at AED 37.21 billion, ahead of Palm Jumeirah (AED 25.49 billion), Business Bay (AED 19.41 billion), Downtown Dubai (AED 18.15 billion) and Al Merkadh (AED 16.91 billion). By deal count the ranking leans toward high-density and emerging communities: Al Barsha South Fourth led with 14,158 transactions, followed by Business Bay (10,174), Marsa Dubai (9,784), Al Merkadh (9,164) and Al Thanyah Fifth (5,550). Business Bay, Marsa Dubai and Al Merkadh feature on both lists — the market's twin engines of value and volume.

Rental market

The rental market grew markedly tighter. New-lease volumes dropped in every segment — apartments down -22.27% to 124,965 new contracts, villas -16.52% (15,731) and commercial -17.35% (19,753) — as tenants increasingly held on to what they had; apartment renewals eased only -1.94% to 144,405. Rents, meanwhile, rose everywhere, with new leases advancing faster than renewals and so penalising those who relocated. The median new apartment rent gained +17.02% to AED 55,000 against +8.31% on renewals (AED 49,141), the median new villa rent leapt +20% to AED 156,000, and new commercial rents rose +15.91% to AED 98,522. Measured per square foot the strain was sharper still, with new villa rents up +28.26% and new apartment rents up +24.14%.

Supply

Developers launched 89,882 units across 299 projects while handing over 40,293 units from 147 — a launch-to-delivery ratio of 2.2 and a net 49,589 more units launched than delivered. That gap signals a sizeable future-supply pipeline building up behind 2023's record demand.

Most expensive sales

Top apartment sales

1. AED 420,000,000 – Jumeirah Marsa Al Arab, Um Suqaim Third
2. AED 200,000,000 – One Za'Abeel Tower, Zaabeel First
3. AED 122,000,000 – Bulgari Residences 3, Jumeirah Bay Islands
4. AED 105,000,000 – Serenia Living - Tower 1, Palm Jumeirah
5. AED 80,000,000 – Bluewaters Residences 7, Marsa Dubai

Top villa sales

1. AED 209,000,000 – Emirates Living
2. AED 202,000,000 – Palm Jumeirah
3. AED 165,620,000 – Al Jaddaf
4. AED 135,000,000 – Jumeirah Bay Islands
5. AED 125,000,000 – Hadaeq Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid

Notes on methodology

Scope. The headline totals and the category table span every property category captured in the data, Plot and Building included. The primary/resale split, the top-area rankings and the year-on-year series are limited to Apartment, Villa and Commercial, so those numbers are intentionally lower than the headline and should not be summed across sections.

Rounding. The headline totals are the authoritative rounded figures. Category-level breakdowns are rounded on their own and may not add up precisely to the headline.

Definitions. Price figures are medians rather than averages. Year-on-year sets the period against the matching period a year earlier. All values are in AED; areas are in square feet.