Who buys Dubai property from abroad: what the published figures show

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Kooky

Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.

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Ask ten people in Dubai's property trade which nationality buys the most homes and the answers will come quickly: Indians, the British, perhaps the Chinese or the Russians. Ask where the answer comes from and the conversation slows down. Some of it comes from the Dubai Land Department, which keeps the emirate's property register. Much of it comes from brokerages and consultancies counting their own deals. The two kinds of number are not the same thing, and they are seldom kept apart.

This guide sorts them. It sets out what the Land Department itself published by nationality and for which periods, what the Dubai Media Office released for the first half of 2025 and what the press reported for the whole of 2025, how those releases treat residents, non-residents, women and first-time investors, what three company sources have said about rankings, and what the Central Bank of the UAE's mortgage rules say about a borrower who is not a UAE national. It ends with what none of these figures can tell a reader. It describes the position as read in October 2026. Every figure below carries its source and its period, and nothing here is a forecast.

Dubai Media Office release of 20 July 2025, Dubai Land Department data; Gulf News report last updated 12 January 2026, citing Dubai Land Department data.

Two kinds of figure, and why they differ

An official figure and a company figure answer different questions. The Land Department holds the register: a count taken from it covers every registered transaction in Dubai in the period, whoever the broker was and whether a broker was involved at all. A brokerage sees only the deals it handled. Its ranking of nationalities describes its own client book, which depends on where its offices are, which languages its brokers speak, which developers it sells for and which price bands it works in.

The companies say so themselves. Gulf News, in a report last updated on 24 June 2026 on a ranking by the brokerage Betterhomes, wrote that the brokerage said transaction volumes were not disclosed and that the rankings reflected its own data only. That sentence is the right way to read every brokerage league table: as an account of one firm's sales in one period.

The official side has a limit of its own. In the two recent sets of official figures read for this guide, the Dubai Media Office release of 20 July 2025 and the Land Department data for 2025 reported by Gulf News, no country is named. Investors are grouped into three broad origins, or split into resident and non-resident, and that is all. To find a ranking by nationality on the Land Department's own pages, this guide had to go back to releases dated January 2016 and August 2017.

So the picture is built from three layers: older official rankings with values, recent official counts without nationalities, and recent company rankings without totals. Each is set out in turn.

The Land Department's count for 2015

On 18 January 2016 the Land Department published its investor figures for the calendar year 2015. The release counted 55,928 investors of 150 nationalities, who put more than AED 135 billion into Dubai property in the year. It split them into three groups: nationals of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, the UAE included; nationals of other Arab countries; and everyone else, whom the release calls foreign investors.

Three things stand out. The first is that "foreign" in the Land Department's vocabulary of the time did not mean "not Emirati". It meant neither Gulf nor Arab. A Saudi or a Jordanian buyer is a foreigner in the everyday sense and is not in the foreign line of the table. Counted by passport, everyone but the Emiratis is a foreign buyer, and the release gives a value for Emirati investors, AED 26.083 billion, without their number.

The second is that the order of nationalities changes with the measure. Among the foreign group, Indians came first on both counts, with 8,756 investors and AED 20 billion. Pakistanis were second by number of investors, 6,106, but third by value, AED 8 billion. The British were third by number, 4,889, and second by value, AED 10 billion. A headline saying which nationality is "second" is therefore incomplete until it says second by what.

The third follows from the second. Dividing each value by its number of investors gives roughly AED 2.28 million per Indian investor, AED 2.05 million per British investor and AED 1.31 million per Pakistani investor for the year. These are this guide's own divisions of the release's rounded figures, not numbers the Land Department published, and an investor may have bought more than one property.

The top ten for January 2016 to June 2017

The second official ranking is dated 28 August 2017 and covers eighteen months, from January 2016 to the end of June 2017. It is built differently from the 2015 release: it counts registered transactions, not investors, and it puts Emiratis in the same list as everyone else.

According to that release, 217 nationalities carried out 71,000 transactions worth AED 151 billion over the period. Emiratis were first, with close to 12,000 transactions worth AED 37.4 billion. Indians followed with 10,628 transactions worth more than AED 20.4 billion, then Pakistanis with 5,398 transactions worth about AED 7 billion, Saudis with 5,366 worth AED 12.5 billion and the British with 4,188 worth AED 9 billion. The release notes that United Kingdom citizens led the European nationalities. Egyptians were sixth; the release, re-read for this guide in October 2026, lists Egypt with the nationalities in sixth to tenth place next to a figure of 2,439 transactions worth over AED 4 billion, which could not be assigned to Egypt alone with certainty. Jordanians were seventh with 2,235 transactions worth AED 4.2 billion, the Chinese eighth with 2,177 worth AED 3.1 billion, the Lebanese ninth with 1,313 worth AED 2.6 billion and Americans tenth with 1,119 worth close to AED 2.9 billion. All remaining nationalities together made 23,318 transactions worth AED 48.665 billion.

The chart is ordered by value, and it does not match the release's own order, which is by number of transactions. Pakistanis are third in the release and fifth in the chart; Saudis are fourth in the release and third in the chart. Read by value per transaction, again as this guide's own division, the gap is wide: about AED 2.33 million for a Saudi transaction, AED 2.15 million for a British one, AED 1.92 million for an Indian one and AED 1.30 million for a Pakistani one.

Two cautions apply before either old release is compared with anything recent. They are nine and ten years old, and they describe a market a fraction of today's size: AED 151 billion over eighteen months then, against about AED 431 billion in six months in 2025 according to the Dubai Media Office. And they do not count the same thing as each other, so the 2015 investor counts and the 2016 to 2017 transaction counts cannot be placed in one series.

What the first half of 2025 release counts

The Dubai Media Office release of 20 July 2025, which cites Land Department data, is the most detailed recent official statement read for this guide. It says Dubai recorded 125,538 real estate transactions worth about AED 431 billion in the first half of 2025, against 99,947 transactions worth AED 345 billion a year earlier, which the release gives as rises of 26 per cent in number and 25 per cent in value.

Within that total, the release counts 94,717 investors, up 26 per cent, who made 118,132 investments worth about AED 326 billion, up 39 per cent from AED 234 billion. The difference between the two totals matters: the AED 431 billion is every transaction, the AED 326 billion is what the release calls investments, and the release does not define what separates one from the other. On the release's own figures, the average works out at about 1.25 investments per investor and about AED 2.76 million per investment, both this guide's arithmetic.

By origin, the release gives values only: AED 228.35 billion from foreign investors, AED 28.4 billion from Arab investors and AED 22.56 billion from investors from the Gulf Cooperation Council. Those three lines add up to AED 279.31 billion, which leaves about AED 46.7 billion of the AED 326 billion unaccounted for in the release. It gives no number of investors for any of the three groups and no change on the previous year. It names no country.

Measured against the AED 326 billion, the foreign line is about 70 per cent, the Arab line about 9 per cent and the Gulf line about 7 per cent. Those shares are computed here and should be read with the vocabulary of the older releases in mind: if "foreign" still means neither Gulf nor Arab, then the share of buyers who are not Emirati is larger than 70 per cent by an amount the release does not let a reader work out.

Residents and non-residents

Nationality and residence are separate facts. A British citizen who has lived in Dubai for fifteen years and a British citizen who has never visited are the same nationality in a ranking and very different buyers. The official figures have started to say something about residence, though in pieces that do not fit together neatly.

For the first half of 2025, the Dubai Media Office release says UAE residents made up 45 per cent of new investors. Applied to the 59,075 new investors in the same release, that is about 26,600 people; the release gives the percentage and not the number. It gives no figure for non-residents, and the remaining 55 per cent cannot be assumed to live abroad, because the release does not say what it is made of.

For 2025 as a whole, Gulf News reported, in an article last updated on 12 January 2026 and citing Land Department data, that non-resident investors accounted for 14 per cent of overall market participation. The same report says the number of new investors rose to 129,400, with residents accounting for 23 per cent of the total. It does not say whether "the total" is the new investors or all investors, nor who makes up what is left once residents and non-residents are set aside.

Put side by side, the two statements show the difficulty. A resident share of 45 per cent among new investors in the first half and of 23 per cent "of the total" for the year cannot both describe the same group measured the same way unless the second half was very different, and the sources do not explain the change. The safer reading is that the two percentages have different bases. What can be said is narrower: according to Land Department data as reported by Gulf News, about one in seven participants in the 2025 market was a non-resident investor.

Women investors and new investors

The first-half 2025 release gives women their own line. According to the Dubai Media Office, 30,487 women investors carried out 34,792 transactions worth AED 73.2 billion in the six months. The release gives no comparison with the previous year.

It gives no share either, but one can be worked out from its own totals, on the assumption that the women's figures are counted on the same basis as the totals for all investors. On that assumption, women were about 32 per cent of the 94,717 investors, made about 29 per cent of the 118,132 investments and accounted for about 22 per cent of the AED 326 billion. The falling order of the three shares suggests the average investment by a woman was smaller than the overall average: about AED 2.10 million against about AED 2.76 million. These are computed figures resting on that assumption, and the release does not confirm it. Neither the release nor any other source read for this guide says what nationality the women investors were, or whether they live in the UAE.

New investors are the other group the release singles out. It counts 59,075 of them in the first half of 2025, up 22 per cent, with investments of AED 157 billion, up 40 per cent. On the release's totals, newcomers were therefore about 62 per cent of all investors in the period and brought about 48 per cent of the money. The release does not define a new investor; the plain reading is someone with no earlier investment on the register, but that is a reading and not the release's wording.

For the full year, two sources give slightly different counts. Gulf News, citing Land Department data, gives 129,400 new investors in 2025. Khaleej Times, on 19 July 2026, reported a figure of more than 129,600, up 23 per cent on the year, from a report by the consultancy Anarock. The two are close and are both shown here as published. Taking the Gulf News figure, the first-half count of 59,075 leaves about 70,300 new investors for the second half of 2025, a subtraction across two sources that neither of them makes.

What brokerages and consultancies have published

Since the recent official figures name no country, the rankings in circulation come from companies. Three were read for this guide, each through a press report.

Betterhomes, a Dubai brokerage, said in a report covered by Gulf News in an article last updated on 20 July 2025 that buyers from the United Kingdom took first place in its deals in the second quarter of 2025, overtaking India, with Pakistan third. The report said its United Kingdom buyer activity grew 56 per cent on the previous quarter. It mentioned Irish and Polish buyers appearing in its deal flow and Russian buyer numbers falling, without figures for any of them. A later Gulf News report, last updated on 24 June 2026, gave the brokerage's order for March to April 2026 as the United Kingdom, India, Australia and Egypt, again with no shares, counts or values.

Anarock's figures, as reported by Khaleej Times on 19 July 2026, are the only ones in this group with percentages. The report put Indian buyers at 22 per cent of buyers in 2025, British buyers at 17 per cent and Chinese buyers at 14 per cent, which together make 53 per cent, and said buyers came from more than 150 countries. The article does not say whether those shares come from the Land Department's register, from the firm's own sales or from another source, nor whether they are shares of buyers, of transactions or of value.

The same report offers a split by motive for buying: own use 38 per cent, rental income 28 per cent, qualifying for a golden visa 21 per cent and capital preservation 13 per cent. The four add up to 100 per cent. Their basis is not stated in the article either, so they are an account from one consultancy and not a survey result that can be checked.

The two firms do not agree on who is first, and they do not have to. Betterhomes puts the United Kingdom ahead of India in its own deals in two separate periods; Anarock puts Indian buyers ahead of British ones for 2025. The older official releases, for what a ranking for 2015 or for January 2016 to June 2017 is worth today, had Indians ahead of the British by number and by value. None of this is a contradiction: the sources measure different things over different periods.

How mortgage rules treat a buyer who is not a UAE national

A ranking of buyers says nothing about how they paid. The lending rules, though, do distinguish between borrowers, and the distinction they draw is not the one a reader might expect.

The governing text is the Central Bank of the UAE's Regulations Regarding Mortgage Loans, listed in the central bank's rulebook as circular 31/2013, in force, in a version consolidated as of 8 April 2020. The rulebook page gives two start dates, 28 December 2013 at the top of the page and 28 November 2013 in its version table. The regulations apply to banks, finance companies and other financial institutions that provide mortgage loans.

The text does not use "resident" or "non-resident" as a category of borrower. Its introduction names UAE nationals, Gulf Cooperation Council nationals and expatriates, and its limits are then set under two headings, UAE nationals and expatriates, neither of which it defines. For an expatriate, the maximum loan-to-value ratio for a first home for owner occupation is 80 per cent where the property is worth less than AED 5 million and 70 per cent above that; for a second or later home, or an investment property, it is 60 per cent whatever the value. For a UAE national the matching ceilings are 85, 75 and 65 per cent. For an off-plan purchase the ceiling is 50 per cent regardless of purpose, value or category of purchaser.

Three further limits apply to everyone. The debt burden ratio is capped at 50 per cent of gross salary and regular income. The loan may not exceed seven times annual income for an expatriate, or eight times for a UAE national. The longest term is 25 years. The regulations set no maximum age: they leave it to each lender's own policy.

A worked example shows the scale, with assumed figures. Take a completed home valued at AED 3,000,000. For an expatriate buying a first home to live in, the 80 per cent ceiling gives a loan of up to AED 2,400,000 and a deposit of at least AED 600,000. Bought as an investment, the 60 per cent ceiling gives AED 1,800,000 and a deposit of AED 1,200,000. Bought off-plan, the 50 per cent ceiling gives AED 1,500,000 and the same amount in deposit. The text ties the first-home ceilings to owner occupation; whether a given buyer living abroad meets that test is a matter for the lender and the case.

For the borrower who lives outside the UAE, what matters most is a sentence in the regulations' application section: nothing prevents providers from adopting more conservative limits. The regulations also tell lenders to use lower loan-to-value ratios where the underlying risks are higher, and not to apply the maximum debt burden ratio automatically. The central bank's ceilings are therefore the most a lender may offer, and the terms a non-resident is actually offered are each bank's own. No bank's published non-resident terms could be read for this guide, so none is quoted; this is the main gap in what follows from the sources.

Two company statements give some market colour, and no more than that. The head of mortgages at Lomond, which Gulf News describes as Betterhomes' mortgage company, was quoted in the report last updated on 24 June 2026 as saying that "LTV structures are clear, and banks are lending"; the same report cited fixed rates from major UAE banks of 3.75 per cent for one year, 3.78 per cent for two and 3.95 per cent for three, without saying which borrowers they were open to. And Anarock's report, according to Khaleej Times, put cash purchases at about 80 per cent of transactions, with no split by residence or nationality.

What the figures do not show

Read together, the published numbers leave more unanswered than the confident rankings suggest.

There is no recent official ranking by nationality in the sources read. The newest one found on the Land Department's pages covers the eighteen months from January 2016 to June 2017; the one before it covers 2015. The first-half 2025 release and the 2025 annual figures name no country at all.

The official groups are not defined. "Foreign", "Arab" and "GCC" are given values without a statement of who falls in each, the three do not add up to the total in the first-half 2025 release, and "investor" and "investment" are used without a definition that separates them from buyers and transactions.

Nationality is not residence. The 14 per cent non-resident share reported for 2025 is not broken down by country, and no ranking says how many of its Indian, British or Chinese buyers live in Dubai already.

Counts, transactions and values rank differently. The 2015 and 2016 to 2017 releases both show nationalities changing places according to the measure, and the company rankings mostly do not say which measure they use.

Shares of women and of new investors are not published as shares. The percentages in this guide are divisions of the release's own figures on a stated assumption.

Company rankings describe companies. A brokerage's order of nationalities is its own client book, as Betterhomes itself said through Gulf News, and it comes without the totals needed to weigh it.

Nothing published shows how purchases were financed by nationality or by residence. The one cash share in the sources is a consultancy's, for the market as a whole.

Several periods are missing. No investor count, women's figure, origin split or resident share for the first half of 2026 was found in the sources read; the figures above stop at the end of 2025.

A league table of buyers is only as good as its fine print: who counted, what they counted, and over which months.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

About Kooky and Shaka →