Not what is asked. What was paid.
Property portals show asking prices. This map shows the purchase contracts the Dubai Land Department actually registered: 19,351 apartment sales from January 2026 – August 2026, area by area. Your negotiating room lies between those two numbers.
- Registered sales
- 19,351
- existing apartments, January 2026 – August 2026
- Areas with a solid figure
- 51
- at least 30 sales per area
- Price movement
- -5.6 %
- May 2026 to August 2026 against January 2026 to April 2026
- As of
- August 2026
- last fully recorded month
The map
Switch between purchase price, rental yield and price movement. Click an area to open its figures. Grey areas have too few registered sales, and we do not estimate anything into them.
Median of registered purchase prices, AED per square foot. 51 areas with a solid figure.
Zooming in reveals 51 buildings by name. Not because more is traded there, but because a position could be established beyond doubt for them. All others appear in the fact sheet of their area: the register holds building names without coordinates, and a guessed position would be the one mistake too many on this map.
The same figures, sorted
The same values as on the map, only stacked differently. The case count is always shown, because a market figure without one is an assertion.
Most expensive areas
Median per square foot
Most affordable areas
Median per square foot
Highest gross yield
annual rent to purchase price, before costs
Steepest decline
May 2026 to August 2026 against the period before
Individual buildings
An area is an average across very different buildings. For 507 buildings there are enough registered sales to show them individually: price by unit size, month-by-month movement and the yield from tenancy contracts in the same building.
Showing the 24 most traded. A building gets its own page from 10 registered sales in the period.
How these figures come about
Source. The Dubai Land Department publishes registered sales and tenancy contracts as open data. We collect them several times a day and keep a daily register of what the authority reported and what we took in. If a day is missing, it is fetched deliberately instead of quietly disappearing.
Scope. We calculate on existing apartments. Off-plan is excluded because payment plans make prices incomparable. Villas are excluded because in most areas they are too rare for a solid median.
Median, not average. A single penthouse sale would tip an average. Monthly medians are combined weighted by case count, so that a weak month with twenty sales does not carry the same weight as one with five hundred.
What we keep quiet about when we do not know. Areas below 30 registered sales stay grey. A yield appears only where enough tenancy contracts are registered too. And a period comparison is omitted when one period is dominated by a bulk sale: if hundreds of units of a single project are registered at once within two months, the calculation would otherwise compare a bulk transfer with normal trading.
What a median is not. It is not a valuation of a particular apartment. Between the oldest and the newest tower in one area there can easily be 40 percent, and floor level, view and condition appear in no statistic. For a specific offer, comparable sales in the same building count, not this map.
Period. Through this interface the authority provides the current calendar year. That is why the analysis reaches back to January 2026 and no further. The current month is left out because in any analysis it looks like a collapse.
More detail
Area guides
Twenty districts described in detail: who they suit, what defines them, with a worked example.
Our listings on the map
Vetted resale properties and new-build projects in their place, with price and yield.
New build with payment plan
Projects with a real payment plan and the developer's documented delivery record.
Frequently asked questions
What does an apartment in Dubai cost right now?
In the period January 2026 – August 2026, 19,351 apartment sales were registered with the Dubai Land Department across the 51 areas shown here. Median prices range from around 672 AED per square foot in International City to around 5,291 AED in Bluewaters Island. The median price of an apartment lies between 427,016 and 8,303,073 AED depending on the area.
Where do these prices come from?
From the sales contracts registered with the Dubai Land Department, which the authority provides as open data. We collect them several times a day, keep a daily register of what was reported and what we took in, and calculate monthly medians per area. These are registered transactions, not listings and not estimates.
Why do these figures differ from Bayut or Property Finder?
Because those show asking prices. A listing says what a seller wants; a registered contract says what a buyer paid. In a falling market the two drift apart, and that gap is exactly the negotiating room.
Are prices in Dubai falling right now?
Across all areas shown, median prices have fallen by 5.6 percent when comparing May 2026 to August 2026 with January 2026 to April 2026. That is an average across very different areas: some fall considerably more, others hold or rise. The map shows which.
What rental yield is realistic in Dubai?
From the registered sales and tenancy contracts, gross yields for the documented areas range from around 7.6 to 9.3 percent. That is gross: service charge, vacancy, management and the Dubai Land Department's 4 percent registration fee are not yet deducted. Net, expect typically 1.5 to 2.5 percentage points less depending on the area.
Why are some areas grey?
Because fewer than 30 apartments were registered as sold there during the period. From so few cases no solid median can be formed. We do not colour those areas in, and we do not estimate anything into them.
Is there a specific offer on the table?
This map shows how an area stands as a whole. Once a price is named, we hold it against the registered sales of the same unit size in the same building and tell you in dirhams how far off it is. As a buyer's agent we work on your side of the table.
Data source: Dubai Land Department, open transaction data, as of August 2026. Map data by OpenStreetMap contributors via OpenFreeMap. Area boundaries from OpenStreetMap (ODbL), not official cadastral boundaries. These figures are market observation and not investment advice.