Last year, the real estate market of the brightest emirate of the UAE saw an unprecedented surge. Several factors played a role here, from geopolitical instability that made thousands of wealthy people search for a new home to investors relocating their influence, to the FIFA World Cup in Qatar which attracted additional attention to Dubai.
If you wish to buy premium property in Dubai, it has definitely become more expensive, but the conditions still remain quite favorable. Let’s look at how the first month of 2023 went on this market. Real estate markets, like many others, have seasonality and therefore we will compare the January 2023 indicators with the January indicators of the previous year.
From the very first pages of the market reports in 2023, we see growth and here residential properties, namely apartments, lead. They sold almost twice as many as in January 2022 – 7401 apartments. By the value of the properties, apartments account for more than half of the total figure. As per https://www.axcapital.ae/, there are plenty of off-plan apartments offered right now.
Despite their high cost, villas are second in demand among different types of real estate. Although the number of villas bought increased only by 7.7%, it remains in the leading position, as 1782 people wanted to buy a villa in January.
According to the data, investors are interested in land plots in the emirate, which were sold 66.8% more (347 plots). Commercial properties showed a significant difference as well, they were sold 65% more than in the same period in 2022, a total of 297 in 31 days.
In total, 9827 deals were concluded last month, which is 70.3% more than the first month of 2022.
Buyers spent a total of 28 billion dirhams on real estate in January, roughly equivalent to $1.5 billion. That’s 63 percent more than last year. Prices have risen for all types of real estate, but villas have gained the most with an average price of AED 2.6 million. Land and apartments also went up in price, by 13.2 percent and 12.5 percent respectively. The average apartment in the emirate will now cost 1.3 million dirhams.
As before, real estate valued at less than a million dirhams remains the most requested. The share of such properties accounts for 32% of the total number of units sold. Properties priced between 1 and 2 million AED are not much inferior to the cheaper units and makeup 29% of the total number. But the share of luxury housing priced above 5 million AED was a mere 5 percent.
A curious finding is that in January, the share of off-plan projects exceeded the number of deals with completed properties and accounted for 59 percent of the total market.
The list of the most sought-after areas of the city has not changed much, with the Business Bay area still in the lead. However, Mohammed Bin Rashid City dropped from the list and was replaced a year later by Dubai Creek Harbour. Let’s take a look at what these neighborhoods are notable for.
| Area name | Sales volume, transactions | Sales value, AED |
| Business Bay | 1,021 | 1,850M |
| Jumeirah Village Circle | 676 | 501M |
| Dubai Creek Harbour | 577 | 1,592M |
| Dubai Marina | 569 | 1,812M |
