Dubai off-plan property accounts for 71% of home sales as luxury demand reshapes market

Dubai recorded 87,800 real estate transactions worth AED 291.7 billion in the first half of 2026, according to figures published by the developer MERED. Average prices rose 9 percent across the period. Off-plan property accounted for 71 percent of all transactions. Underneath those headline figures sits a number that receives far less attention. Approximately 121,000 new residents joined Dubai during the same six months. That is the figure worth isolating, because it behaves differently from every other statistic in the report.

Transaction volumes can be influenced. Launch timing, payment plans, developer incentives, marketing cycles, all of it can move the number of deals in a given quarter. Prices can be talked up or talked down depending on who is doing the reporting and what they are selling. Population is different. A person does not relocate to a city on sentiment. Moving 121,000 people into a place in six months requires jobs to employ them, housing to hold them, schools for their children, healthcare, transport, and a reason to stay. You cannot market your way to that figure. It is the one number in the entire report that has to be earned before it can be printed. And 121,000 in half a year is not a soft figure. It is roughly 660 people arriving every single day, each one converting from a statistic into demand for a place to live.

Now place that population figure against the 71 percent off-plan share, because the combination is where the actual signal lives. Conventional behavior says that during periods of uncertainty, and the first half of 2026 carried plenty of it, capital retreats toward finished, ready property. A completed unit can be seen, occupied, and rented immediately. It is the defensive choice. Off-plan, by contrast, requires the buyer to commit to something that does not physically exist yet and will not for years. Yet 71 percent of all transactions were off-plan. In a period when the textbook says buyers should have moved the other way. That tells you the buyer was not acting defensively. He was positioning for a future he expects to arrive, and the 121,000 arrivals are the reason that expectation is rational rather than hopeful. Population growth is forward demand made visible. When people are still moving in at 660 a day, buying the unit that completes in 2028 is not speculation. It is arithmetic. Today's arrivals become tomorrow's tenants, and the investor buying off-plan is simply purchasing ahead of a demand curve he can already watch forming. Volume tells you what the market did last quarter. Price tells you what buyers were willing to pay. Population tells you whether any of it is built on something real. And of the three, it is the only one that cannot be manufactured.

Every report leads with the transaction value, because it is the largest number on the page. But the largest number is rarely the most honest one. 121,000 people did not move to Dubai because of a marketing campaign. They moved because the city gave them a reason to, and that reason is the foundation every other figure in the report is standing on.