DST

Real estate 2 min read

Dubai property passed half a trillion dirhams before September began

A tall stack of thin paper bars on a slate ground, the topmost bar shorter than the one below it, a single brass rule drawn across the stack

The headline number is the one nobody can hold in their head, so start with the one you can: in August, Dubai registered a property transaction roughly every three minutes of the working month.

The eight months

From January to the end of August the emirate recorded Dh523.44 billion across 148,564 transactions. Sales were Dh349.83 billion over 112,020 of them; mortgages Dh134.34 billion over 30,645; gifts Dh39.27 billion over 5,899.

August on its own

Dh46.22 billion across 15,960 transactions. Sales accounted for Dh27.89 billion and 11,600 of them — 10,124 residential units, 684 buildings, 793 plots of land. Mortgages added Dh14.36 billion, gifts Dh3.97 billion.

The number that is not about buying

A third of the eight-month value is not a sale at all. Dh134.34 billion of mortgages is money moving against property that already has an owner, and Dh39.27 billion of gifts is property changing hands inside families without a price. Read only the sales line and you have described two thirds of the market.

What it does not say

None of this is a price. Value and count together give an average, and an average across villas on the Palm and studios in Jumeirah Village Circle describes nothing anyone can buy. The figure that moves a decision is the price per square foot in one tower, and that is not in this release.

The mortgage share is the line worth watching month to month, because it is the one that responds to something other than sentiment. Sales volume can be pushed by a launch calendar — a developer opening a tower moves thousands of transactions in a week — but mortgage value tracks what banks will lend against, and banks re-underwrite continuously. When mortgage value grows faster than sales value, the existing stock is being revalued upward; when it lags, new supply is carrying the market on payment plans rather than on credit. Eight months in, the two are moving close enough together that neither is telling a story the other contradicts.

Source: Voice of Emirates checked against the source

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