One Dubai building, many prices: what a building median does not tell you
How much sold prices vary inside one building, and what to check before trusting its median.
A building page gives you one number. It is a median, and a median is a single point standing in for a distribution that a buyer never sees. Across 1,583 Dubai buildings with at least 30 sampled sales each, the middle half of those sales spans 15% of the building's own median. Not the market's range. One address.
A worked example
Al Habtoor Tower in Business Bay sits close to the middle of the distribution, with a large sample behind it.
28,632 AED/sqm
Median
25,893 AED/sqm to 31,000 AED/sqm
Middle half
10,807 AED/sqm to 48,438 AED/sqm
Full range
438
Sampled sales
Half the sales here landed within 18% of the median, which is unremarkable. The full range is the part worth pausing on: the cheapest and dearest sales in the same building differ by roughly 4x per square metre. Same address, same year, same registration process.
A building median is the middle of an argument, not the end of one.
Where the range gets wide enough to matter
| Building | Area | Middle half spans | Middle half | Sampled sales |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orra The Embankment - Tower 1 | Al Thanyah Fifth | 109% | 3,229 AED/sqm to 12,594 AED/sqm | 85 |
| AL RAMTH 57 | Al Hebiah Fifth | 93% | 4,981 AED/sqm to 10,226 AED/sqm | 34 |
| 7 Seasons | Warsan Fourth | 83% | 7,341 AED/sqm to 13,433 AED/sqm | 46 |
| I RISE TOWER | Al Thanyah First | 74% | 10,898 AED/sqm to 22,389 AED/sqm | 94 |
A spread near 109% is not a market disagreeing with itself about a floor or a view. At that width the building is almost certainly selling more than one kind of thing: a mix of unit sizes where the small ones carry a much higher rate per square metre, or off-plan units registering alongside completed resales, or retail space recorded under the same name as the apartments above it.
The practical consequence is narrow and important. In a building like this, the median answers no question you actually have. Comparing your unit to it tells you nothing until you have separated out the transactions that resemble your unit.
The buildings with no range at all
5 buildings in the sample show an interquartile spread under 1%. Dozens of sales, effectively one rate.
What to check on a building page
Read the sample size first. A median resting on fewer than 30 sales moves with any one of them, which is why buildings below that floor are excluded here entirely.
Then read the range, not the middle. If the page shows quartiles, the distance between them tells you whether the median means anything for your unit. A tight range around a large sample is a usable benchmark. A wide range is a signal to stop using the building as a unit and start filtering inside it.
Then check whether the sales are spread over time or clustered. Clustered sales at one rate are a launch. Sales spread across quarters at varying rates are a resale market, and only the second kind tells you what a buyer will pay.
Related reading: whether a building prices above or below its area takes the same data one level up, and villa versus apartment rates covers the mix problem when the two sides are different property types.
Data comes from Dubai Land Department historical sales records through 2026-08-13. It covers sales only (not rentals) and is market reference, not valuation or investment advice.