August 2026, straight from the Dubai Land Department transaction register, converted to dollars. 11,600 registered sales. Not portal asking prices.
Every figure below comes from the Dubai Land Department transaction register for August 2026, converted at the pegged rate of 3.6725 dirhams to the dollar. Not a portal estimate. Not an asking price. What actually changed hands.
Most American coverage of Dubai property quotes asking prices from listing portals. Asking prices are marketing. The Dubai Land Department publishes the actual register of every transaction it processes, and that register is the only honest answer to what a property costs.
We pulled the full month. 15,955 registrations. 11,600 of them sales, worth $7.59 billion. Here is what that looks like to a buyer thinking in dollars.
The median Dubai sale in August was $330,255. The mean was $654,653.
The gap between those two numbers is the whole story. A small number of very large transactions pull the average up while the typical sale sits near a third of a million dollars. Half of everything that traded in Dubai last month sold for less than the median price of a home in most large American metros.
That is not a discount market. It is a market with a very deep entry tier, which is a different thing, and the distinction matters when you are deciding what you are actually buying into.
Apartments only, with a recorded floor area, from the August register. Sizes are converted from square metres at 10.7639.
| Unit type | Sales | Median price | Median size | Per sq ft |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio | 3,640 | $176,649 | 381 sq ft | $474 |
| 1 bedroom | 3,640 | $326,711 | 756 sq ft | $433 |
| 2 bedroom | 1,903 | $551,607 | 1,238 sq ft | $446 |
| 3 bedroom | 458 | $972,496 | 1,826 sq ft | $522 |
Basis: 10,123 apartment sales in the August 2026 register carrying both a price and a recorded actual area. Medians, not averages.
Two things worth sitting with. A one bedroom in Dubai at 756 square feet is larger than a one bedroom in most American cities, and it trades at $433 a foot. And the studio tier is not a rounding error, it is 3,640 sales in a single month, the joint largest segment in the city.
This is the finding that contradicts almost every piece of advice given to foreign buyers.
The assumption is that buying off-plan from a developer gets you a discount for taking construction risk. In the August register the opposite is true.
Off-plan apartments traded at a 24.9 per cent premium per square foot over ready apartments last month. Widen the basis to include land and whole buildings and the premium is 18.3 per cent. The number moves with the basis, which is why we publish both. The direction does not move at all.
Off-plan units are also smaller. Median off-plan apartment: 678 square feet. Median ready apartment: 865. So the buyer paying the premium per foot is also buying fewer feet.
What this does not mean. It does not mean off-plan is a bad purchase. Payment plans, a new building, developer warranties and the ability to sell before handover all carry genuine value, and a like for like comparison is impossible because off-plan stock is newer and concentrated in different districts than ready stock.
What it does mean. If somebody tells you that buying off-plan is how you get in below market, ask them which market. In the regulator's own register, off-plan is the expensive side of the trade, and 67.1 per cent of August sales were off-plan.
The ten districts with the most apartment sales in August. The final column is the share of that district's sales that were off-plan, which tells you whether you are looking at a construction site or a neighbourhood.
| District | Sales | Per sq ft | Median price | Off-plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Madinat Al Mataar | 1,727 | $479 | $198,775 | 100% |
| City of Arabia | 769 | $460 | $167,461 | 98% |
| Jumeirah Village Circle | 729 | $385 | $272,294 | 49% |
| Business Bay | 405 | $565 | $449,285 | 33% |
| Downtown Jebel Ali | 395 | $438 | $196,673 | 98% |
| Jebel Ali Industrial Second | 361 | $477 | $201,950 | 100% |
| Dubailand Residence Complex | 312 | $388 | $246,835 | 87% |
| Majan | 250 | $413 | $248,245 | 84% |
| Dubai Production City | 206 | $363 | $210,565 | 64% |
| Dubai Marina | 199 | $583 | $650,660 | 2% |
Read the last two rows against each other. Dubai Production City and Dubai Marina are both in the top ten by volume. One is 64 per cent off-plan at $363 a foot with a median ticket of $210,565. The other is 2 per cent off-plan at $583 a foot with a median ticket over $650,000.
Dubai Marina is a finished neighbourhood where people live and resell to each other. Madinat Al Mataar, the single busiest district in the city last month with 1,727 sales, is 100 per cent off-plan. Nobody is living there yet. Both are legitimate purchases. They are not the same purchase, and a brochure will not tell you which one you are looking at.
Dubai luxury coverage is loud. The actual arithmetic is narrow.
Sales at or above 10 million dirhams, which is $2,722,941, numbered 319 in August. That is 2.75 per cent of all sales and 30.5 per cent of all sale value.
The largest single transaction in the month was $197.4 million for a residential building in the Burj Khalifa district. One transaction, 2.6 per cent of the entire month's sale value.
So roughly one sale in thirty-six accounts for nearly a third of the money. If your impression of Dubai comes from social media, you are seeing the 2.75 per cent.
Method and source. Figures are computed from the Dubai Land Department public transaction register for 1 to 31 August 2026, downloaded 2 September 2026. Currency converted at the UAE dirham's fixed peg of 3.6725 to the US dollar. Areas converted from square metres at 10.7639 square feet.
Per square foot figures use apartment sales only, filtered to rows carrying both a transaction value and a recorded actual area, giving 10,123 of the month's 11,600 sales. All central values are medians. Where a figure changes depending on which property types are included, we publish both.
The DLD register is revised after publication. Comparing an export taken on 19 August against one taken on 2 September over the same 1 to 18 August window, 300 transactions had been added and 169 removed, a net change of 1.9 per cent. Treat any single month's figures as the register's best current record rather than a final one.
Cresco Real Estate is a Dubai brokerage registered with RERA under ORN 34288. This page is market information and not investment, legal or tax advice.