Dubai apartment price index

1. 1
   Global financial crisis · 2008-10

   Lehman Brothers fails in September; Dubai's off-plan resale market seizes within weeks and mortgage lending stops.

2. 2
   Dubai World standstill · 2009-11

   Dubai World asks creditors for a six-month standstill on US$26 billion of debt; Abu Dhabi funds the Nakheel sukuk repayment the following month.

3. 3
   Mortgage caps · 2013-10

   The UAE Central Bank caps loan-to-value at 75% for a first home under AED 5 million (80% for nationals) and 50% for off-plan purchases.

4. 4
   Expo 2020 awarded · 2013-11

   The Bureau International des Expositions awards Expo 2020 to Dubai on 27 November.

5. 5
   Oil price fall · 2014-11

   OPEC holds output at its 27 November meeting; Brent falls below US$80 and halves by January 2015.

6. 6
   COVID-19 lockdown · 2020-03

   Dubai closes malls and restricts movement from 26 March; the Land Department keeps registering remotely, at a fraction of the volume.

7. 7
   Russia–Ukraine war · 2022-02

   Russia invades Ukraine on 24 February; capital seeking a neutral jurisdiction lifts Dubai demand through 2022.

8. 8
   Golden Visa reform · 2022-04

   The UAE Cabinet expands the ten-year Golden Visa: the property threshold falls to AED 2 million and off-plan and mortgaged purchases qualify, in force from October.

9. 9
   US–Iran war · 2026-02

   US and Israeli strikes on Iran on 28 February open a regional war, with intercepted missiles and drone debris over the UAE. Registered apartment sales fall from 12,898 in February to 10,900 in March.

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Per square foot, not price

Every sale enters as its registered price divided by its registered floor area. A month of studio sales and a month of penthouse sales have very different median prices and the same market; per square foot they can be compared.

Median, not mean

Each month's figure is the median price per square foot across every registered apartment sale in Dubai that month, from the transaction rows directly, never from building or area averages. One AED 200 million sale does not move a median.

Rebased to 100

The index divides every month by the first month with at least 100 registered sales and multiplies by 100, so a reading of 140 means prices per square foot are 40% above that base month. The base month and its price per square foot are printed on this page.

Smoothed

The drawn line is a centred 5-month rolling median of the monthly medians, so one thin month cannot print as a crash. The raw monthly median stays on every point, in the chart tooltip and in the JSON record.

The newest months are provisional

The Land Department receives registrations for weeks after a sale completes, so the last 2 months are still filling in. They are drawn dashed and the headline figures read from the last complete month.

Sale and rent measured the same way

The rent series, where shown, is built identically from new Ejari contracts: annual rent per square foot, median per month, smoothed and rebased the same way. Renewals are excluded because a capped renewal is not a market rent.