Dubai's one-bedroom wave: where the off-plan pipeline is concentrated

Cavendish Maxwell counted 24,800 homes handed over in Dubai in the first half of 2026, 37.9% more than a year earlier. It puts nearly 37% of scheduled completions in six communities: Jumeirah Village Circle, Dubai South, Dubai Science Park, Business Bay, Downtown and Dubai Healthcare City. Those figures cover homes of every size. This guide narrows them to one-bedroom flats and asks where that pipeline is concentrated and how large it is in each area next to the one-bed market already there.

The sales register has no completion dates, so it cannot say what hands over when. What it does record is where one-bedroom apartments were sold off-plan from September 2023 to mid-2026, and those sales are the stock the coming handovers are drawn from. Below, those sales are counted by area and set against two things the same areas already have: completed one-beds that change hands, and leases registered in 2025.

How the pipeline was built

Every figure in this section is a count from the transaction sample, one-bedroom apartments only. The sample is a steady draw of about 34.5% of each month's registrations, with the same off-plan and apartment mix as the full register, so area shares and ratios computed on it hold for the whole market.

Most of the pipeline was sold in 2024 and 2025, which fits handovers landing from 2026 on. The 2023 row starts in September and the 2026 row stops at 2026-06-30. The 2026 row is also short by most of a month, because registrations from 2026-05-21 to 2026-06-20 are largely missing from the source data. Shares of the total are unaffected by that gap, since it removes sales from every area at once.

Where the one-bedroom pipeline is

An area is listed when it has at least 200 sampled off-plan one-bed sales. The 38 areas that clear it hold 97.2% of the citywide total. The ratio column divides off-plan one-bed sales by completed one-bed sales in the same area and period, and is left blank below 50 completed sales, where a handful of resales would swing it. Lease counts and rent per square metre are 2025 Ejari figures for leases of any size, shown where the area appears in the lease table.

The top of the list matches the Cavendish Maxwell completion schedule. In the register, Al Barsha South Fourth is first, Business Bay second and Madinat Al Mataar, which covers Dubai South, is number 5. Downtown, filed as Burj Khalifa, is the exception. It has a lot of completions scheduled, and its one-bed pipeline is 0.6x the flats that already resell there, one of the lowest ratios in the table.

Business Bay shows how far the raw count and the ratio can disagree. It has 2,705 sampled off-plan one-bed sales, 6.1% of the city's, which is a large pipeline by any count. Set against its own resale market it is 2.0x, below the citywide 2.6x, and ranks 20 of the 31 areas with a ratio, counting from the most exposed. It also registered 17,866 leases in 2025. The new one-beds there join a market that already trades and lets in volume.

Most and least exposed

Measured against the one-beds that already trade in the same area, the heaviest pipelines are in Dubai Investment Park Second (24.6x), Al Barshaa South Second (14.9x), Al Barsha South Fifth (8.4x). These are districts where the finished one-bed market is still small, so the units being built will be most of what there is to rent or resell once they are handed over. At the other end, Burj Khalifa (0.6x), Marsa Dubai (0.7x), Nadd Hessa (0.8x) have more completed one-beds changing hands than off-plan ones being sold. In areas like those the new stock joins a market that already has a price history and a tenant base.

Another 7 listed areas sit outside the ratio because they have almost no completed one-beds to compare with: Bukadra (2,137 off-plan, 0 completed), Madinat Dubai Almelaheyah (2,110 off-plan, 17 completed), Palm Deira (1,389 off-plan, 0 completed), Ras Al Khor Industrial First (633 off-plan, 0 completed), Wadi Al Safa 4 (614 off-plan, 5 completed), Al Satwa (385 off-plan, 16 completed), Zaabeel First (289 off-plan, 15 completed). Together they hold 17.1% of the citywide pipeline. Most are newly built districts, where the finished one-bed market will be whatever is under construction now. A few are older central areas where one-bed resales are rare in the sample.

Against current leasing

The last column of the table sets the pipeline against the leases an area registered in 2025. It scales the sampled off-plan count up by the sample fraction to estimate a full-register figure, then divides by the lease count. The lease count covers every residential size, so the ratio is a rough measure of how large the one-bed pipeline is next to the rental market as a whole.

Among the 32 listed areas that appear in the lease table, the highest figures are Madinat Dubai Almelaheyah (342), Al Barshaa South Second (258), Al Hebiah First (231) estimated off-plan one-bed sales per 100 leases. The lowest are Warsan Fourth (8), Nadd Hessa (9), Marsa Dubai (14). A figure above 100 means the area sold more off-plan one-beds in under three years than it registered leases of any size in a full year. There are 5 such areas, and 3 of them rent below 918 AED/sqm a year, the median of the listed areas with lease data. That is the cheaper end of the rental market, where a tenant choosing between an older flat and a new building has the most price options.

Jebel Ali is the opposite case to the lease-heavy areas. The register splits it into broad areas. Jabal Ali First carries 1,634 off-plan one-beds at 2.1x its completed sales, with 27,152 leases in 2025. Jabal Ali Industrial Second carries 223 off-plan one-beds at 4.5x its completed sales, with 898 leases in 2025. Jabal Ali First ranks 2 of the 32 listed areas by lease count, counting from the largest, so its pipeline is small next to its rental market. Studios are outside this count. The studio and one-bed comparison is in studios against one-bedrooms.

How many one-bedrooms that adds up to

The sample holds about a third of the register, so the counts above need scaling before they say anything about the city as a whole. Take the 37,234 sampled off-plan one-bed sales registered from 2023-10 to 2025-12, the last full months before 2026. Over those months the sample is 35.0% of the full register, which scales the count to about 106,000.

That figure misses in both directions. The register window starts in September 2023, so it leaves out projects sold in 2022 and early 2023 that complete in 2026. Unsold units in completed projects are also outside it. The other way, a unit resold before handover is registered as a second off-plan sale, so resales inflate the count. What the register supports is a figure of roughly a hundred thousand, with no finer precision than that.

For how the off-plan share of apartment sales grew and where, see off-plan's share of the market. For what the 2025 leases pay against sale prices area by area, see rental yields from registered leases.

Data comes from Dubai Land Department sales records through 2026-09-17 (a sample) and Ejari lease contracts for 2025. Market reference, not valuation or investment advice.