Is Dubai in a 50% price correction? What registered prices show since the peak

Registered sale prices in Dubai are 5.1% to 18.7% below their peaks, depending on the segment and how the fall is measured. The figure in the April headlines was far bigger. It was a 30% crash in the DFM Real Estate Index, a basket of listed developer shares led by Emaar. That index measures what investors will pay for those companies and says little directly about what a flat sells for, but an index with "real estate" in its name down by nearly a third reads like a property crash. This guide measures how far the price paid for a home has moved since the peak, and sets it against a 50% fall, prices halving, as a yardstick for what a collapse would look like in the register.

Before the war, in May 2025, Fitch had pencilled in a correction of up to 15% running from the second half of 2025 through 2026. REIDIN's sales price index was down 0.77% year on year in August. The Land Department's own price index page still shows November 2022 as its latest reading, so the figures below are built from the register directly.

The registration record holds the price paid in every completed sale, which is enough to track each segment from its peak. It holds no figures on supply or listings, and that blind spot, covered in the last section, bears directly on the question.

How the numbers are built

Each point is the median AED/sqm of the sampled sales in a trailing three-month window, stepped one month at a time. Since the war began, a single month holds only a few hundred villa sales, and a few dozen per area, which is too thin to read. Three months pooled is the shortest window that keeps enough areas in play.

Every segment is measured two ways. The raw figure takes all sales in the window. The fixed-weight figure takes each area's own median and weights it by that area's share of the segment's sales in 2025, the last full year before the war, so a shift of sales towards cheaper or dearer communities cannot pass for a price change. An area enters the fixed-weight set only if it has enough sales in every window of the series: 20 for apartments, 10 for villas. That leaves 22 areas covering 83% of 2025 completed-apartment sales, 21 covering 69% of off-plan apartment sales, and 15 covering 77% of villa sales. Villas include off-plan villas.

Peak to latest, by segment

The peak is the highest window in the series, which starts with the window ending 2023-12. "Since the war" compares the latest window with the one ending 2026-02, the last before the strikes. The typical move is the median absolute change between non-overlapping windows before the war; the deepest pre-war fall is the largest peak-to-trough decline before March 2026.

Completed apartments. The fixed-weight series peaked in the window ending 2026-02, the last one before the war, at 18,040 AED/sqm, and now reads 16,534 AED/sqm, a change of -8.4%. Its typical three-month move before the war was 2.9% and its deepest pre-war fall -1.4%, so this decline is outside anything the series did from 2023-12 until the war. The raw median gives -7.1% from a peak in the window ending 2026-04. On the two measures the fall covers 14% and 17% of the distance to a 50% correction.

Off-plan apartments. The raw median is -8.4% from its peak. Before the war it gave up 8.4% in the stretch to the window ending 2024-04, so the raw series has taken a fall of this size before; the raw off-plan median swings whenever launches move sales between areas. With the mix held fixed the fall is -5.1% from a peak in the window ending 2025-12 and -2.2% since the war began, the smallest of the three segments. The ready-market guide found the same mix effect in its quarterly off-plan figures.

Villas. The raw median fell 18.7% from its peak, the largest raw figure here and the one most likely to be quoted. The peak itself was a composition effect. In the six months to the window ending 2026-02, raw villa prices rose +26.2% while the fixed-weight series rose +6.4%: sales had swung towards dearer communities in the months before, and part of the fall since is that swing reversing. Holding the mix fixed, villas are -10.8% from their peak and -8.0% since the war. That is still the largest fixed-weight fall of the three, and the one resting on the thinnest cells.

The series, month by month

Raw and fixed-weight medians for every window ending in 2025 or later. Rows marked "outage" are the windows left out because of the missing month.

The completed-apartment fixed-weight column climbs through 2025, tops out in the window ending 2026-02 and steps down after it. The villa raw column jumps in the windows around 2026-02 and falls back; the villa fixed column peaks in the window ending 2025-12 and drifts lower from there.

What a 50% fall would look like

Halving is a specific price, and the register can say where it sits against the last three years.

A 50% fall would put completed apartments at 7,938 AED/sqm, well under the lowest window in the sample, 12,605 AED/sqm in the window ending 2023-12. The same holds for off-plan apartments and villas. So halving needs prices below any window since 2023-12, and so far the register shows a fall of 5.1% to 18.7% depending on segment and measure.

What the register cannot see

Everything above is built from completed sales, which makes it slow to show a turn.

The register records a sale when it completes. A price cut on a listing shows up only if and when that listing sells. Fortune reported that by the end of May sellers had cut listed prices by a combined AED 2.36bn across 3,292 properties; none of those cuts reach this data until a buyer signs. Unsold stock, listings pulled from the market and owners who decide to wait leave no trace at all.

When buyers pull back, volume moves before price. Fortune cited Goldman Sachs putting UAE transaction volume 37% lower year on year in the first 12 days of March. Our monthly counts for 2026-07 and 2026-08, both clear of the outage, come to 21,660 against 38,527 in the same months a year earlier, -43.8%. Those two recent months are thinner in our extract than in DLD's published totals, so the real fall is smaller; the guide to which segments stopped buying reconciles the two counts and breaks the fall down. At that volume, the sales that still happen are the ones where buyer and seller agreed, and a seller holding out for last year's price drops out of the sample. A median built from completed sales therefore moves late when the market turns, and the size of the lag is something the register cannot measure.

Registered prices are down in every segment since the war, each by more than its typical three-month move before the war, and by 5.1% to 18.7% from their peaks. With the mix held fixed the falls run from 5.1% to 10.8%, inside the correction of up to 15% that Fitch described before the war, and a small fraction of the 50% yardstick. For the quarterly index behind these movements see the Dubai price index guide; for area-by-area year-on-year changes in completed apartments, the ready-market guide.

Data comes from Dubai Land Department historical sales records through 2026-09-17. Prices are from the published transaction sample; volumes are monthly register counts, which for July and August 2026 run below DLD's published totals. Sales only, not rentals. Market reference, not valuation or investment advice.