Dubai off-plan down payments: what 5%, 10% and 20% down actually buy

929 projects ask 10% down, 924 ask 20%, 395 ask 5% or less.

1,855 Dubai projects publish a headline down payment. The median is 10% and the middle half runs 10% to 20%. Sorted instead by what each published plan asks on booking, 929 projects offer a plan at 10% down (41% of the readable book), 924 at 20% (41%) and 395 at 5% or less (17%). The low deposit is written by 155 developers across 98 communities.

Bands overlap: a project with one plan at each deposit counts in both, and a plan asking a deposit between bands sits in none. The headline figure is one marketing number per Dubai project; the bands count booking stages across the UAE.

Each band lists its projects: 5% or less down, 10% down and 20% down; every other structure is at off-plan payment plans.

5% or less down still means 50% before the keys; 20% down means 60%.

The median plan at 5% or less down asks 5% on booking, 45% during construction and 45% on handover. At 20% down it is 20%, 40% and 37%. The 15 point gap in the deposit narrows to 10 points before the keys, because the smaller deposit is collected back as a larger handover payment. On the Dubai median price that is AED 286,500 less on day one, AED 191,000 less before the keys and AED 152,800 more due on the day the keys change hands. Going from 10% down to 5% or less leaves the median before the keys unchanged at 50%.

Stage medians are taken stage by stage, so a row need not sum to 100. Cash columns apply each median to the Dubai median asking price of AED 1,910,000. A post-handover tail is money due after the keys, outside the cash before keys.

To run any schedule on your own price, month by month, use the payment plan calculator; the stage split across every Dubai plan is in the payment plan note.

Discounted, the 5% or less schedule is worth 6.54% off the price, the 20% one 4.84%.

Discounting each published schedule to present value at 5.0% a year, the median plan in the 5% or less band is worth 6.54% off its headline price across 347 projects, the 10% band 5.47% across 797, and the 20% band 4.84% across 771. Choosing 5% or less over 20% moves 15 points of price off day one but 1.70 points of value, about AED 32,470 on the Dubai median price. The deposit is a cash flow decision far more than a price one.

The plan discount is the gap between the headline price and the schedule's present value, at one rate for every project, over schedules complete enough to place on a calendar. It is not a discount any developer offers.

How the discount is built, and why the order survives any sensible rate, is the payment plan discount study.

5% or less down asks AED 1,458 per sqft across the UAE, AED 1,799 inside Dubai.

Across every priced record, 5% or less down asks a median AED 1,458 per sqft, 10% AED 1,990 and 20% AED 2,149. Part of that gap is geography: 47% of the 5% or less band's priced records are in Dubai against 88% of the 20% band's, and Ajman alone holds 26%. On Dubai records only, the three bands sit at AED 1,799, 2,010 and 2,087, against a Dubai median of AED 2,021.

Unit level: every priced record in a band's projects, so a large tower weighs more than a villa scheme.

The emirate gap on its own is off-plan outside Dubai; communities ranked on rate alone are at cheapest communities per sqft.

38% of projects asking 10% down are already marked sold out.

Of the 395 projects in the 5% or less band that publish a sale status, 29% are marked sold out. The 10% band stands at 38% of 929 and the 20% band at 32% of 924. Read a band's project list as evidence of terms, not of stock: a deposit advertised on a sold-out building is not on offer.

How sell-through runs by build stage, community and developer is the sell-through note.

Expo City Dubai is where 10% down is most common: 13 of 15 projects.

Among the 37 Dubai communities with a published 10% down page, Expo City Dubai leads on share: 13 of its 15 off-plan projects offer a plan at that deposit. By count Dubai South has the most, 64 of 142.

Top 8 by share. A community qualifies at 5 or more projects asking the deposit, and not where the band holds more than 90% of them. Before keys is over the plans asking the deposit; AED/sqft is the median of per project medians; service charge is AED per sqft a year.

Each row opens that community's 10% down page. Start with Expo City Dubai, Mina Rashid and Town Square, or Dubai South for the deepest list.

After the keys: the running cost no payment plan includes.

The plan stops at handover; the service charge starts there. 1,407 off-plan projects state one, and the median project states AED 15 per sqft a year. Across the 50 Dubai communities with 5 or more projects stating a charge, medians run from AED 3.5 in DAMAC Hills 2 to AED 30.5 in Al Wasl. On the 10% band's median unit of 1,021 sqft, the market median comes to about AED 15,315 a year, roughly 9% of a 10% deposit on the band's median ticket of AED 1.70M, every year. These are developer-stated launch figures, not the RERA service charge index, which is set per building once it is managed.

Every community ranked on the same basis is at off-plan service charges by community. Check the RERA figure before buying a completed unit.

What we cannot see: the deposit you will actually be asked for.

Every figure is a published plan or an asking price, and a published schedule is an opening position: waived deposits, reshaped instalments and agent incentives are agreed unit by unit and leave no public record. None of the cash figures include the land department transfer fee, registration, agency commission or mortgage costs, all paid outside the developer's price.

The same discipline across the wider market is the Q3 2026 market note.