Dubai publishes every registered property transaction as open data: sales, off-plan sales, mortgages and gifts, with the price, the size and the area. Portals show asking prices; this register shows what buyers actually paid.
I pulled every transaction the Dubai Land Department (DLD) registered from 1 to 29 October 2026: 16,108 rows after cleaning, of which 11,027 are sales, and grouped them by off-plan vs ready, by area and by bedroom count. Data as of 29 October 2026, 15:26 UTC.
The short answer
- 58% of Dubai property sales in October 2026 were off-plan: 6,420 of 11,027 registered sales. Ready sales were 4,607.
- By value, ready property still leads: AED 19.4 billion of ready sales against AED 12.5 billion off-plan, out of AED 31.9 billion in total. The median ready sale (AED 1.83 million) is larger than the median off-plan sale (AED 1.25 million) because ready sales include land plots and whole buildings.
- Off-plan flats cost about 25% more per square metre than ready flats: median AED 19,303 per sqm against AED 15,434, across 8,639 residential unit sales. The median off-plan unit is also smaller: 68 sqm against 81 sqm, so the median ticket is almost the same (AED 1.18 million vs 1.20 million).
- The gap depends on the area: +7% in Majan, +28% in Jumeirah Village Circle, +43% in Business Bay, +83% in Dubai Land Residence Complex.
- One month is 16,000 rows: 11,027 sales, 4,123 mortgages (AED 11.5 billion) and 958 gifts.
How the numbers were measured
-
Source: the DLD open-data transactions service, fetched with the Dubai DLD Property Transactions Actor on Apify (run
T6ufNxkMMy6eAuIwE, inputfromDate 2026-10-01,toDate 2026-10-29, all transaction groups, 16,508 rows, 202 seconds). -
Cleaning: 267 rows were exact duplicates (all
Portfolio Mortgage Registration, one loan secured on many units, which DLD lists once per unit with identical values). 132 rows carried a 30 September date (DLD filters on the registration timestamp, not the calendar date), so the study keepstransactionDate1 to 29 October. One 70.74 sqm flat in Marina Pinnacle registered at AED 919,789,428 (AED 13 million per sqm) is excluded as a data-entry error. That leaves 16,108 rows. -
Off-plan vs ready: DLD's own
isOffplanflag. In practice off-plan sales are theSell - Pre registrationprocedure (6,191 rows) andDevelopment Registration Pre-Registration(223); ready sales areSale(3,061),Delayed Sell(1,379) and a few smaller procedures. - Price per sqm: transaction value divided by DLD's actual area, for residential units (flats, hotel apartments) of at least 20 sqm. Medians, not averages, because a handful of penthouses and whole-floor deals move an average by thousands of dirhams.
| Transaction group | Rows | Value (AED billion) | Median value (AED) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales, off-plan | 6,420 | 12.5 | 1,250,152 |
| Sales, ready | 4,607 | 19.4 | 1,826,000 |
| Mortgages | 4,123 | 11.5 | 1,297,039 |
| Gifts | 958 | 5.2 | n/a |
Of the 11,027 sales, 8,679 were units, 1,408 land plots (all ready) and 940 buildings (655 off-plan). 96% were freehold, 98% residential.
Price per square metre by bedroom count
Residential unit sales, 1 to 29 October 2026, median values:
| Rooms | Off-plan sales | Off-plan AED/sqm | Off-plan size | Off-plan price | Ready sales | Ready AED/sqm | Ready size | Ready price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio | 1,931 | 19,212 | 36 sqm | 700,000 | 612 | 14,111 | 41 sqm | 550,000 |
| 1 B/R | 2,180 | 17,853 | 69 sqm | 1,211,468 | 1,132 | 14,735 | 75 sqm | 1,052,333 |
| 2 B/R | 1,057 | 20,568 | 112 sqm | 2,222,439 | 741 | 16,253 | 118 sqm | 1,950,000 |
| 3 B/R | 206 | 19,398 | 169 sqm | 3,432,847 | 216 | 20,957 | 177 sqm | 3,800,414 |
Studios and one-bedrooms are 71% of off-plan unit sales. Three-bedroom units are the one segment where ready stock is dearer per sqm than off-plan: the ready three-bedroom sales in October clustered in Palm Jumeirah (20), Downtown (18), Business Bay (18), Dubai Marina (16) and Dubai Creek Harbour (15), while the off-plan ones were led by Dubai Islands (Palm Deira, 20), Wadi Al Safa 3 (12) and Dubai Land Residence Complex (11).
Price per square metre by area
The 20 areas with the most residential unit sales. n is the number of sales behind each median; treat anything under 30 as indicative.
| Area (DLD name) | Unit sales | Off-plan share | Off-plan median AED/sqm (n) | Ready median AED/sqm (n) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jumeirah Village Circle | 754 | 52% | 17,380 (394) | 13,573 (360) |
| Madinat Al Mataar (Dubai South, Azizi Venice) | 572 | 100% | 18,370 (572) | – |
| Business Bay | 401 | 28% | 29,375 (113) | 20,550 (288) |
| Dubai Land Residence Complex | 362 | 87% | 16,105 (315) | 8,778 (47) |
| Majan | 305 | 83% | 15,277 (253) | 14,323 (52) |
| Jabal Ali Industrial Second | 298 | 100% | 19,619 (298) | – |
| Al Hebiah Fifth (Damac Lagoons) | 260 | 100% | 19,385 (260) | – |
| Arjan | 242 | 57% | 18,029 (139) | 14,818 (103) |
| Al Hebiah First | 207 | 100% | 16,172 (207) | – |
| Jumeirah Village Triangle | 199 | 76% | 18,337 (151) | 14,095 (48) |
| City of Arabia | 194 | 95% | 17,837 (184) | 11,979 (10) |
| Dubai Sports City | 172 | 55% | 17,453 (94) | 9,954 (78) |
| Down Town Jabal Ali | 169 | 96% | 19,406 (163) | 12,911 (6) |
| Dubai Production City | 162 | 58% | 16,469 (94) | 10,697 (68) |
| Burj Khalifa (Downtown) | 160 | 14% | 38,021 (22) | 27,680 (138) |
| International City Phase 1 | 150 | 13% | 13,778 (19) | 7,090 (131) |
| Palm Deira (Dubai Islands) | 142 | 93% | 27,477 (132) | 23,896 (10) |
| Dubai South | 140 | 53% | 14,051 (74) | 10,725 (66) |
| Dubai Marina | 134 | 11% | 29,484 (15) | 17,762 (119) |
| Al Khairan First (Dubai Creek Harbour) | 132 | 100% | 27,299 (132) | – |
Three things stand out:
- Volume is in the new districts. Six of the top ten areas were 83–100% off-plan, and the ten busiest areas took 42% of all unit sales. Single projects drive it: Raw District 2 by Imtiaz (246 sales), Binghatti Skyterraces (201) and Damac Lagoons Lagoon Views 13 (163) each sold more units in October than the whole of Dubai Marina (134); Azizi Venice 7 (131) came close.
- The established areas are mostly resale. Dubai Marina (11% off-plan), International City (13%), Downtown (14%) and Business Bay (28%) are where ready stock trades.
- The off-plan premium is widest where ready stock is old. In every one of the 13 areas with at least 30 sales on each side, the off-plan median was above the ready median: Majan +7%, Arjan +22%, Al Furjan +25%, JVC +28%, JVT +30%, Dubai South +31%, Damac Hills +37%, Business Bay +43%, Dubai Production City +54%, Jumeirah Lakes Towers +57%, Dubai Sports City +75%, Dubai Land Residence Complex +83%, Motor City +87%. The clearest exception just below the threshold was Meydan One (29 off-plan, 93 ready sales), where ready stock sold at AED 21,567 per sqm against 15,497 off-plan.
The most expensive areas by median price per sqm (at least 30 unit sales) were Tecom Site A (AED 43,089), Business Park (37,220), Palm Jumeirah (35,485), Dubai Maritime City (34,566) and Al Wasl (33,134). The cheapest were International City Phase 1 (7,326), Discovery Gardens (9,552), Dubai Investment Park First (9,577), Liwan (10,993) and Silicon Oasis (11,276).
What a month of DLD data looks like
- Weekdays only. 97% of October's rows carry a Monday-to-Friday date; Saturday had 369 rows and Sunday 79 across four weekends. A daily feed that runs on a weekend returns almost nothing.
-
Around 540 to 930 rows per working day, with a 1,309-row spike on 2 October, 557 of them
Delayed Sellregistrations. - Ticket sizes: 30% of sales were under AED 1 million, 32% between 1 and 2 million, 27% between 2 and 5 million, 7% between 5 and 10 million, and 393 sales (4%) were AED 10 million or more. The largest was an AED 600 million land plot in Barsha Heights on 29 October; three plots in Al Rowaiyah First sold for AED 126–215 million each on 22 October.
-
Mortgages: 4,123 registrations and modifications, median AED 1.30 million; 2,809 were plain
Mortgage Registration. -
Field coverage (sales, off-plan / ready): project 100% / 80%, rooms 95% / 68%, nearest metro 36% / 56%, nearest mall 35% / 55%, parcel id 36% / 35%, master project 1% / 0%. Group on
areawhen you need every row to fall into a bucket.
Get the Dubai Land Department transaction data as JSON
DLD publishes the register through its open-data portal and the Dubai Pulse platform; there is no public REST API with a documented key. The Dubai DLD Property Transactions Actor reads that service and returns JSON, CSV or Excel with numeric AED values, ISO dates, boolean offPlan and freehold flags and pricePerSqmAed precomputed. It needs no login, API key or proxy and costs $1 per 1,000 transactions; the 16,508 rows behind this article cost about $16.50 and took three and a half minutes.
Last 7 days of off-plan sales in one HTTP call:
curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/data_daemon~dubai-property-transactions/run-sync-get-dataset-items?timeout=300" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"daysBack": 7, "transactionGroup": "sales", "offPlan": "offplan", "maxItems": 5000}'
Each row looks like this (trimmed):
{
"transactionNumber": "11-29816-2026",
"transactionDate": "2026-10-14",
"group": "Sales",
"procedure": "Sale",
"usage": "Residential",
"offPlan": false,
"freehold": true,
"area": "BURJ KHALIFA",
"project": "BURJ KHALIFA TOWERS",
"propertyType": "Unit",
"propertySubType": "Flat",
"rooms": "2 B/R",
"actualAreaSqm": 146.6,
"transactionValueAed": 6175000,
"pricePerSqmAed": 42121.42,
"nearestMetro": "Buj Khalifa Dubai Mall Metro Station",
"nearestMall": "Dubai Mall"
}
To reproduce the area table, pull October's sales and group with pandas:
from apify_client import ApifyClient
import pandas as pd
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("data_daemon/dubai-property-transactions").call(
run_input={"fromDate": "2026-10-01", "toDate": "2026-10-29",
"transactionGroup": "sales", "maxItems": 0}
)
df = pd.DataFrame(client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items)
df = df.drop_duplicates(subset=df.columns.difference(["scrapedAt"]))
df = df[df["transactionDate"] >= "2026-10-01"]
units = df[(df["propertyType"] == "Unit") & (df["usage"] == "Residential")
& (df["pricePerSqmAed"] > 0) & (df["actualAreaSqm"] >= 20)]
table = (units.groupby(["area", "offPlan"])["pricePerSqmAed"]
.agg(sales="size", median_aed_sqm="median")
.unstack("offPlan"))
table["total"] = table["sales"].sum(axis=1)
print(table.sort_values("total", ascending=False).head(5).round(0))
sales median_aed_sqm total
offPlan False True False True
area
JUMEIRAH VILLAGE CIRCLE 360.0 394.0 13573.0 17380.0 754.0
Madinat Al Mataar NaN 572.0 NaN 18370.0 572.0
BUSINESS BAY 288.0 113.0 20550.0 29375.0 401.0
DUBAI LAND RESIDENCE COMPLEX 47.0 315.0 8778.0 16105.0 362.0
MAJAN 52.0 253.0 14323.0 15277.0 305.0
Ready-made inputs, each a one-click run:
- Dubai property sales in the last 7 days
- Dubai off-plan transactions this week
- Dubai ready (secondary) property sales, last 7 days
- Dubai mortgages registered this week
From an AI assistant, add the MCP connector https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=data_daemon/dubai-property-transactions in Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor and ask "what did two-bedroom flats in Business Bay sell for in October?".
FAQ
How many Dubai property sales are off-plan?
In October 2026, 58% by count (6,420 of 11,027 registered sales from 1 to 29 October) and 39% by value (AED 12.5 billion of 31.9 billion). Residential units alone were 66% off-plan.
Is off-plan cheaper than ready property in Dubai?
Per square metre, no: the median off-plan flat registered at AED 19,303 per sqm in October 2026, 25% above the ready median of AED 15,434. Off-plan units are smaller (median 68 sqm vs 81 sqm), so the median price paid was almost the same, AED 1.18 million against 1.20 million. The premium ranged from +7% (Majan) to +87% (Motor City) in the 13 areas with at least 30 sales on each side; Meydan One, just under that threshold, was the one busy area where ready stock sold higher.
What is the average price per square metre in Dubai?
Across 8,639 residential unit sales in October 2026 the median was AED 18,273 per sqm (about AED 1,700 per sq ft). It ranges from AED 7,326 in International City Phase 1 to AED 43,089 in Tecom Site A, so quote the area, not the city.
Is there a Dubai Land Department API?
DLD publishes transactions as open data (the DLD open-data portal and Dubai Pulse), not as a documented public REST API with keys. The Actor above wraps that service: POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/data_daemon~dubai-property-transactions/run-sync-get-dataset-items returns the rows for any date range, and the Apify client libraries, n8n, Make, Zapier and MCP call the same endpoint.
How often is DLD transaction data updated?
Daily on working days. The register has rows for every Monday to Friday; weekends carry a few dozen rows at most. Rows registered late in the day can appear in the next day's pull, so dedupe on the full row when you append daily.
Does the data include buyer or seller names?
No. The open-data service carries no personal data: transaction number, date, procedure, area, project, property type, rooms, size, value and nearest metro, mall and landmark.
Numbers are from the DLD register as read on 29 October 2026 and will change as late registrations and corrections are added. Nothing here is investment advice. Data: Dubai Land Department open data.
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