The Dubai apartment price index, and what a three-month fall is worth
How the index is built, which periods are too thin to read, and whether the latest move is large enough to mean anything.
Dubai apartment prices climbed through 2024 and 2025 at a steady couple of percent a quarter. Then the series stopped climbing, and the most recent readings sit below the peak. Whether that is a turn depends entirely on how large a move has to be before it means something, so this guide builds the index and then measures its own noise.
The series
| Quarter | Median AED/sqm | Sampled sales |
|---|---|---|
| 2023Q4 | 16,742 AED/sqm | 9,440 |
| 2024Q1 | 17,321 AED/sqm | 10,365 |
| 2024Q2 | 17,450 AED/sqm | 12,205 |
| 2024Q3 | 17,129 AED/sqm | 13,906 |
| 2024Q4 | 17,505 AED/sqm | 13,979 |
| 2025Q1 | 17,964 AED/sqm | 11,892 |
| 2025Q2 | 18,362 AED/sqm | 14,539 |
| 2025Q3 | 18,748 AED/sqm | 17,589 |
| 2025Q4 | 19,187 AED/sqm | 17,385 |
| 2026Q1 | 19,087 AED/sqm | 13,378 |
Across the series the median rose +12.7%, most of it in a straight line through 2024 and 2025, at a pace close enough to two percent a quarter that you could have guessed each quarter from the one before it.
Which periods were thrown out
A period can be unreadable for three reasons, and this dataset manages all of them.
| Period | Sampled sales | Why it is excluded |
|---|---|---|
| 2023-08 | 2,037 | The sample begins mid-month |
| 2026-05 | 2,828 | Overlaps the registration outage |
| 2026-06 | 1,299 | Overlaps the registration outage |
| 2026-08 | 1,451 | Still filling at the snapshot date |
Sales reach the register after they complete, so the newest weeks in any extract are always thinner than they will be a month later. Read them as data and the end of every series bends downward.
The outage is a separate problem. Registrations ran at their usual level through 2026-05-21, fell to single digits for a month, and came back the day after 2026-06-20. Those filings were never made, so no future refresh will restore them.
How big does a move have to be
2.3%
Typical month-on-month move
11.6%
Largest month-on-month move
9.4%
Largest 3-month move in the series
-7.9%
Fall from 2026-04 to 2026-07
A median over several thousand sales still moves around. The panel above puts a typical month a couple of percent from the one before it, and individual months have swung several times that in both directions during quarters when the trend was clearly upward.
Measured over the same span, the series has produced larger moves before, during a stretch that turned out to be part of a rise. On that comparison the recent decline is ordinary.
What can be said is narrower and firmer: the steady quarterly climb that ran through 2024 and 2025 has stopped. Calling it a peak needs another two or three complete months.
What would settle it
Watch the complete months, and give the newest one a month to fill before reading it. Three consecutive complete months under 18,067 AED/sqm would take the decline past anything the series has managed over the same span, and that is where the market has changed shape instead of the sample.
Volume is the other half. A price series can hold up while transactions dry out, and the two say different things about the same market. The transaction slowdown guide covers the count side, with the same caution about the outage window applying there.
Related reading: what this data covers explains why apartments are counted separately from villas and land, which is what makes a single index possible.
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.