Measured from the Dubai Land Department register
Did Dubai property prices drop during the regional conflict?
Not the price of a square foot. Since the escalation resumed on 28 February 2026, the median price per square foot of a registered Dubai home is -2.3% against the same number of days immediately before it. What moved instead is the number of homes sold, -33.6% a day over that same stretch, and the size of home people are buying.
Fewer sales is not one fact, it is two, and which one it is depends on which side of the deal you are on. If you are buying, there is more on the market and less competition for it, so you can take your time and choose. If you are selling, it means pricing against what has actually been registering rather than against last year. Both are below, and the second one comes with the register attached.
1,145,008 registered home sales, register current to 2026-10-28. Homes only: land, whole buildings, offices, shops and hotel inventory are excluded, and mortgages and gifts are not sales. How we count.
Since February 2026
Regional escalation resumed on 28 February 2026. A ceasefire in April and a memorandum of understanding in June were each followed by renewed strikes, and the memorandum expired in August 2026. The windows below are dated from 28 February.
| Window | Sales | Per day | Median AED/sqft | vs before |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 days before2026-01-31 to 2026-02-28, the baseline | 14,497 | 517.8 | 1,758 | baseline |
| First four weeks2026-02-28 to 2026-03-28, from the day it resumed | 10,551 | 376.8 | 1,702 | -3.2% |
| 28 days after2026-03-28 to 2026-04-25, the four weeks following | 11,882 | 424.4 | 1,848 | +5.1% |
Registrations ran at 376.8 a day in the four weeks from the day it resumed against 517.8 a day in the four weeks before, a change of -27.2%. Price per square foot moved -3.2%.
And over the whole run, against the matched span before it
| Span | Sales | Per day | Median AED/sqft |
|---|---|---|---|
| The same span before2025-06-30 to 2026-02-28, 243 days | 132,711 | 546.1 | 1,737 |
| Since it resumed2026-02-28 to 2026-10-29, 243 days | 88,078 | 362.5 | 1,697 |
| The change | -33.6% | -2.3% |
Both spans are the same number of days, so the per-day and median figures are directly comparable. The matched span runs back from 28 February 2026, which means it covers a busier stretch of 2025.
The 2025 comparison
A twelve-day escalation ran from 13 June 2025 to a ceasefire on 24 June. It is here as the only comparison that exists: one regional escalation that began, intensified and resolved, so what the register shows rests on more than a single observation.
| Window | Sales | Per day | Median AED/sqft | vs before |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 days before2025-05-16 to 2025-06-13, the baseline | 12,399 | 442.8 | 1,676 | baseline |
| During the fighting2025-06-13 to 2025-06-25, while it was happening | 6,075 | 506.3 | 1,727 | +3.0% |
| 28 days after2025-06-25 to 2025-07-23, the four weeks following | 14,412 | 514.7 | 1,649 | -1.6% |
Registrations ran at 506.3 a day while it was happening against 442.8 a day in the four weeks before, a change of +14.3%. Price per square foot moved +3.0%.
Why two honest sources can disagree
The typical sale got cheaper. The price per foot did not.
Those are two different numbers and both are true. The typical sale price is the median ticket, and it falls when people buy smaller homes. The price per square foot is the price level, and it is the one that answers whether property got cheaper. Through 2026 the median home registered in Dubai has been smaller than it was a year earlier, so the ticket came down while the price per foot held. A headline using the first number to describe the second is not lying, it is answering a different question. The monthly table below carries all three, so you can see it rather than take our word for it.
If you are selling, this is the number that matters
With more homes on the market, a buyer has the luxury of comparing, and the asking price is what they compare. Pricing against what a neighbour was asking last year is how a listing sits. Pricing against what has actually registered is how it sells. That is a question with an answer, and the register holds it.
What has your home been registering at?
Add the community or building, the type and the size. We value it against the sales registered there in the last year and show you the comparables, so you can check the figure rather than take it.
Built from sales registered with the Dubai Land Department. It is a comparable-based guide, not a formal valuation, and a bank or a court will want a licensed valuer. Registered prices are what homes sold for, which is not the same as what they were listed at.
Every month since January 2025
So you can see the whole run in context rather than only through our choice of window.
| Month | Sales | AED/sqft | Typical sale | Typical size |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-01 | 11,111 | 1,586 | AED 1,498,394 | 82.2 sqm |
| 2025-02 | 13,149 | 1,553 | AED 1,500,000 | 83 sqm |
| 2025-03 | 13,093 | 1,632 | AED 1,474,476 | 78.8 sqm |
| 2025-04 | 14,671 | 1,603 | AED 1,400,000 | 78.4 sqm |
| 2025-05 | 14,873 | 1,656 | AED 1,367,000 | 77.7 sqm |
| 2025-06 | 13,595 | 1,690 | AED 1,350,000 | 76.4 sqm |
| 2025-07 | 17,014 | 1,688 | AED 1,323,791 | 75.2 sqm |
| 2025-08 | 16,287 | 1,736 | AED 1,362,521 | 74.4 sqm |
| 2025-09 | 18,128 | 1,700 | AED 1,325,000 | 74.1 sqm |
| 2025-10 | 17,440 | 1,692 | AED 1,341,250 | 75.3 sqm |
| 2025-11 | 16,790 | 1,760 | AED 1,465,000 | 76.3 sqm |
| 2025-12 | 17,293 | 1,803 | AED 1,380,000 | 76.2 sqm |
| 2026-01 | 14,399 | 1,772 | AED 1,634,888 | 83.3 sqm |
| 2026-02 | 14,497 | 1,758 | AED 1,540,000 | 79.9 sqm |
| 2026-03 | 12,196 | 1,733 | AED 1,531,883 | 78.6 sqm |
| 2026-04 | 12,438 | 1,825 | AED 1,600,000 | 77.9 sqm |
| 2026-05 | 9,341 | 1,633 | AED 1,151,752 | 70.4 sqm |
| 2026-06 | 11,929 | 1,692 | AED 1,135,000 | 68.1 sqm |
| 2026-07 | 12,460 | 1,679 | AED 1,075,020 | 67.7 sqm |
| 2026-08 | 10,932 | 1,696 | AED 1,155,350 | 69.5 sqm |
| 2026-09 | 10,027 | 1,657 | AED 1,257,720 | 73.6 sqm |
| 2026-10 | 8,755 | 1,668 | AED 1,250,000 | 73.2 sqm |
The final row is a part month. The register is current to 2026-10-28, so that month is not comparable with the complete ones above it.
What the register can and cannot settle
It settles the price question, which is the one being asked: whether a square foot of Dubai housing got cheaper when the region escalated. On this evidence it did not. In the 2025 escalation the register actually got busier, running +14.3% against the four weeks before it, with price per square foot +3.0%.
What a registration count cannot do is tell you why it moved, and we are not going to present it as though it can. Most Dubai home sales are off-plan, and an off-plan registration follows a developer deciding months earlier when to launch a tower: fewer launches in a month means fewer registrations in it whether or not anything changed about demand. Attributing a volume change to any single cause would be a guess in the costume of a finding, so the page reports the count and leaves the cause alone.
Figures are medians across every registered home sale in the window, so one large transaction cannot move them. They are not adjusted for which communities were selling, which does move a city-wide median: a month weighted towards one area reads as that area’s price. Per-community figures, which do not have that problem, are on each area page.
Source: Dubai Land Department transaction register, as published. The medians are ours, calculated as described above; the underlying records are the Land Department’s. This page is general orientation and not investment advice.
