Dubai Real Estate Market Report — 2024

Dubai Real Estate Market Report – 2024

Dubai's property market ended 2024 at a new high, with 181,699 transactions changing hands across every property type for a combined AED 524.59 billion — a record on both fronts. At the all-property headline level, the median came in at AED 1,529/sqft.

Excluding plots and buildings, the combined Apartment, Villa and Commercial core delivered 177,698 deals, a +37% rise on 2023, and AED 441.09 billion in value, up +32%. That marked a fourth straight year of double-digit growth, and with every category advancing in both count and value, 2024 stood out as the strongest year in the 11-year record.

Headline figures

The market in context

Apartment, Villa and Commercial transaction counts and value across the seven years leading up to 2024:

Year-on-year performance by category

Apartments led the year's growth. The segment posted 142,107 sales, a +42% surge that added 42,269 deals versus 2023 and marked the highest annual volume in the 11-year series. Value climbed to AED 263.90 billion (+32%), and the median price strengthened to AED 1,638/sqft — up +7% on the year, +36% above the 2014 level, and a series high in its own right. Yet the median ticket rose just +3% to AED 1,268,530, suggesting buyers absorbed the steeper per-foot cost mainly by choosing smaller or similarly sized units rather than trading up.

Villas followed a different pattern — more measured on volume, steeper on price. Transactions climbed +21% to a series-record 31,275, some 5,372 more than the year before, while value rose faster still, up +30% to AED 167.51 billion. The difference lies in pricing: the median reached AED 1,344/sqft, up +19% year on year and a remarkable +83% above its 2014 level — by far the largest cumulative gain of any category. At AED 3,272,888 (+15%), the median villa ticket confirms the segment's growth came from value per deal as much as from deal count.

Commercial, the smallest of the three core segments, produced the year's most uneven gains. Transactions edged up a modest +10% to 4,316 — 410 more than in 2023 and the highest annual volume since 2014 — yet value jumped +40% to AED 9.69 billion, driven by a +29% rise in price per square foot to AED 1,399/sqft and a +33% increase in the median ticket to AED 1,395,510. Even the smallest segment of the market shared in the year's broad-based repricing.

Every category, including plots and buildings

Beyond the three core categories, land plots contributed a sizeable AED 82.44 billion across 3,985 transactions at a median AED 5,500,000 per deal, though the AED 449/sqft per-foot median reflects undeveloped land rather than built product. A further 16 whole-building sales added AED 1.06 billion at the market's highest median ticket, AED 12,485,458.

Primary versus resale

Off-plan supply remained firmly in charge of the market. Primary sales accounted for 67% of volume and 66% of value — 118,399 deals worth AED 289.26 billion — with resale making up the remaining 59,299 transactions (33%) and AED 151.83 billion (34%). Resale's value share running slightly ahead of its volume share indicates those deals were priced a touch higher on average, though pricing across the two channels was broadly similar overall.

Where the activity was

Ranked by value, Marsa Dubai came out on top at AED 29.05 billion, just ahead of Business Bay at AED 27.42 billion, with Hadaeq Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid (AED 22.53 billion), Dubai South (AED 18.98 billion) and Wadi Al Safa 5 (AED 18.48 billion) completing the top five. Volume painted a different picture: Al Barsha South Fourth led with 17,434 transactions, followed by Business Bay (12,003) and Wadi Al Safa 5 (8,668), while Marsa Dubai (7,921) and Dubai South (7,686) closed out the leaders — a divide that sets the high-ticket waterfront districts apart from the high-turnover growth corridors.

Rental market

The rental market tightened across every segment. New apartment contracts totalled 134,462 (+7.60%) at a median rent of AED 66,000, up a sharp +20%, while the 160,036 renewals (+10.82%) came in well lower at AED 53,000 (+7.85%) — the usual gap that favours tenants who renew rather than move. Villa rents climbed even higher, with new leases reaching a median AED 170,000 (+8.97%) across 17,398 contracts; villa renewals, however, were the only segment to lose volume, falling -1.78% to 18,073 even as their median rent rose +10.01% to AED 147,488. Commercial leasing firmed as well, with renewal rents jumping +17.65% to a median AED 100,000.

Supply

Developers pushed hard on new supply. In total, 168,926 units launched across 507 projects, against just 31,613 completions from 126 projects — a launch-to-delivery ratio of roughly 5.3 to one, leaving a net 137,313 more units launched than delivered. This widening gap between what is sold off-plan and what is actually handed over remains the key supply dynamic to watch in the coming years.

Most expensive sales

Top apartment sales

1. AED 110,000,000 – Serenia Living - Tower 3, Palm Jumeirah
2. AED 84,000,000 – Bluewaters Residences 9, Marsa Dubai
3. AED 80,000,000 – The Address Jbr 2 (Jumeirah Gate Tower 2), Marsa Dubai
4. AED 70,000,000 – Bulgari Residences 1, Jumeirah Bay Islands
5. AED 65,000,000 – The Rings - 1, Jumeirah Second

Top villa sales

1. AED 610,000,000 – area not recorded
2. AED 216,000,000 – Palm Jumeirah
3. AED 200,366,036 – Al Hebiah Fifth
4. AED 200,000,000 – Hadaeq Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid
5. AED 165,620,000 – Al Jaddaf

Notes on methodology

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

Rounding. Headline totals stand as the authoritative rounded figures. Category-level breakdowns are rounded on their own and may not add up exactly to the headline.

Definitions. Price figures represent medians rather than averages. Year-on-year figures compare the period with the same period a year earlier. All values are stated in AED; areas in square feet.