Dubai off-plan market, Q3 2026: twelve findings from the priced record

Dubai off-plan is asking a median AED 1,988 per sqft.

Across 48,651 priced unit records in 1,996 projects, the middle half sits between AED 1,561 and AED 2,612 per sqft. The mean, AED 2,216, sits above the median, which is the signature of a long tail of prime stock rather than a broad repricing.

The same distribution, cut by community, is the cheapest communities per sqft ranking and its inverse.

The spread between the most and least expensive community is 5.4x.

Palm Jumeirah leads on median asking price per sqft at AED 5,249 (391 priced units, 53 projects). Villanova anchors the other end at AED 978 (75 units, 8 projects). Both are measured on the same basis, so the ratio is a like-for-like asking price gap, not a quality judgement.

The five highest and the five lowest of the 77 Dubai communities carrying 30 or more priced unit records, highest first. The ratio between the two ends is 6.2x on the same measure.

Both ends have their own benchmark page: Palm Jumeirah and Villanova. The full ladder is in the community ranking.

Small stock carries the highest price per sqft, not the lowest.

Studios ask a median AED 2,219 per sqft on 8,400 records, against AED 1,875 for 1 BR (17,850 records) and AED 2,003 for 2 BR (13,214 records). Per sqft, the entry product is the expensive one, which is the single most common mispricing in off-plan comparisons.

The same cohorts by ticket size run the other way: a studio asks a median AED 828K at 375 sqft, a 1 BR AED 1.50M at 754 sqft.

Community by community: studios, one bedrooms, two bedrooms and three bedrooms. The full ladder, ticket and floor area included, is in the bedroom note.

18% of priced units are asking under AED 1M.

That is 8,622 of 48,651 records. Under AED 1.5M the share is 39% (19,125 records). The sub 1M pool is concentrated: 42 communities carry five or more such units, spread over 600 projects.

The ten Dubai communities with the lowest median asking price among the 77 carrying 30 or more priced unit records. Median price is the middle of every priced record in the community, not the cheapest line in a price list.

Counted by project rather than by unit, the entry budget list is where to buy off-plan under AED 1M.

The standard plan asks a median 60% of the price before you get the keys.

Measured on 3,348 payment plans across 2,568 Dubai projects that publish one. 57% of plans demand 60 percent or more before handover, and only 22% ask 40 percent or less.

The softest terms we can see, by community and by developer, are in the pre-handover ranking, and the full anatomy of the plans, stage by stage, is in the payment plans note.

Only 17% of plans carry a post-handover component.

That is 567 of 3,348 plans. Where a post-handover tail exists it is worth a median 40% of the price, so the marketing phrase covers a genuinely different deal in one plan out of six and nothing at all in the rest.

Every community and developer page carries the same decomposition for its own plans.

Payment terms differ more by developer than by community.

Among the 39 developers with ten or more projects carrying a plan, Reportage asks a median 30% before handover and Nakheel asks 80%. That 50 point spread on the same purchase price is a larger cash flow difference than most buyers get from negotiating the price itself.

We do not chart this one: the two medians quoted are computed on the Dubai plan subset behind the report, and the site pages aggregate each developer across every emirate it builds in, so a side by side bar would put two different bases next to each other. Read them on their own pages instead, Reportage and Nakheel, or ranked against everyone else in the pre-handover ranking.

35% of the handover pipeline lands in 2027.

Of 2,179 Dubai projects scheduled between Q3 2026 and Q4 2030, 771 complete in 2027, the heaviest single quarter being Q4 2027 with 267 projects and 5,661 priced unit records.

Which communities carry that book: 2026, 2027 and 2028. The whole schedule to 2030, by community and by developer, is in the handover pipeline note.

The ten largest developers hold 39% of the tracked Dubai pipeline.

1,295 of 3,297 tracked Dubai projects, led by Emaar with 332. The ten busiest communities hold 42% of projects, so supply is more concentrated by developer than by location.

The ten busiest Dubai communities by tracked projects hold 1,000 of 2,337 projects, 43% of the emirate's tracked pipeline.

The developer half of the same concentration is developers ranked by pipeline, and the busiest community of all has its own page, Jumeirah Village Circle.

Villas ask 16% less per sqft than apartments, and buy roughly 4.9x the floor area.

Apartments: AED 2,025 per sqft on 43,946 records at a median 854 sqft. Villas: AED 1,710 on 1,886 records at 4,162 sqft. Townhouses sit between them at AED 1,286 on 1,958 records.

On the same base, a townhouse asks 1,351 per sqft against 2,084 for an apartment, and a penthouse 3,657.

Houses ranked community by community: townhouse and villa price per sqft.

Cheap by the sqft and cheap by the ticket are different lists.

Of the 84 communities with 30 or more priced units, the ten cheapest by median price per sqft carry a median unit price of AED 2.27M, while the ten cheapest by median unit price carry a median of AED 970k. Buyers filtering on ticket size systematically miss the better priced sqft.

Two rankings of the same 77 communities, side by side. The left list carries a median unit price of AED 1.15M, the right list AED 1.00M. Only the communities that appear in both columns are cheap on both measures.

Read the left column in full as cheapest communities per sqft, the right as off-plan under AED 1M.

We cannot publish a launch to current price gap, and we say so.

Of 1,651 Dubai projects carrying both a published starting price and three or more priced units, 85% restate the same number, so the field is a listing floor rather than a launch record. Only 11% show listed stock above the published start. That is a data limitation, not a market finding, and no appreciation figure in this report depends on it.

There is nothing to chart here, and that is the point: a chart would give the impression that the underlying series exists. What the published starting price is, and is not, is set out in the methodology.