How to read Dubai's official property data, from sales to rent indices

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Kooky

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

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A broker in Dubai is asked the same thing every week: what is the market doing? The honest answer depends on which official number is being read. A count of registered transactions, a price index and a rent index are three different instruments, built in three different ways, and the Dubai Land Department publishes all three alongside a set of raw tables that anyone can download.

This guide takes the official sources one at a time: the department's open data tables, the transaction dataset it publishes through the Dubai Pulse portal, the Mo'asher sales price index, the Residential Rental Performance Index, the rental index calculator and the Smart Rental Index, and the buildings table kept in the Dubai Pulse statistics archive. For each, it sets out what the source's own page says it counts, how it is built, and the date its figures carry. Everything here was read on the official pages on 10 October 2026; what those pages do not say is named as an open point rather than filled in. One warning before any figure: the index values quoted below come from the editions that could be read, October 2023 for sales and the third quarter and November of 2022 for rents. They are used to show how each source is read. They are not a picture of the market in 2026.

Dubai Land Department: Real Estate Data page, Mo'asher announcement of 8 June 2020, Residential Rental Performance Index page.

Four kinds of official number

It helps to sort the sources by what they are before reading any figure.

The first kind is the register extract: rows taken from the department's own records, one row per registered event. The open data page and the Dubai Pulse dataset are of this kind. They are counts and amounts, not estimates.

The second kind is the price index: a statistical series that tries to say how prices have moved after allowing for the fact that the homes sold this month are not the same homes sold last month. Mo'asher, for sales, and the Residential Rental Performance Index, for rents, are of this kind. Both are produced by the Dubai Land Department in partnership with Property Finder, according to the department's own pages.

The third kind is the valuation tool: the rental index calculator and the Smart Rental Index return a figure for one property, not a reading of the whole market.

The fourth kind is the statistical table: the buildings and housing units dataset held in the Dubai Pulse statistics archive, which describes the stock of buildings and says nothing about prices.

Mixing the kinds is where misreadings start. A rise in the value of registered transactions is not a rise in prices; an index value is not a price for a given flat; a calculator result is not a market average.

The nine open data tables

The Dubai Land Department's Real Estate Data page offers nine datasets: Transactions, Rents, Project, Valuations, Land, Building, Unit, Broker and Developer. Each opens a search form, each search asks for a captcha, and each result table carries a "Download as CSV" option. The page states no row limit for a download. It also gives no definitions of its terms and no statement of how far back the data goes; it says that data for previous years is available through a Digital Dubai data initiative.

The Transactions table comes first. Its form requires a start date and an end date, and offers the filters shown below.

Each row returned carries a transaction number and date, the type and sub-type, the registration type, the freehold flag, the usage, the area, the property type and sub-type, the amount, the transaction size and the property size in square metres, the number of rooms, parking, the nearest metro station, mall and landmark, the number of buyers and of sellers, and the master project and project.

The other tables answer different questions. Rents can be searched by registration date, start date or end date, and filtered by "Version", which separates new contracts from renewals; its rows give the contract amount and the annual amount as two separate columns, with the property size, the number of rooms and the number of units. Project lists each development with its developer, its value, its escrow account number, its percentage completed, its inspection and completion dates and a status drawn from eight values, among them Active, Finished, Cancelled and "Freezed". Valuations gives a property's total value, size and area. Land, Building and Unit describe the stock itself. Broker lists each broker's number, name, licence start and end dates and brokerage; Developer lists licence type, legal status and licence dates.

Sales, mortgages and gifts are three separate things

The first filter matters more than any other. The department's records group transactions into sales, mortgages and gifts, and a headline that adds the three together describes registration activity, not home sales.

The Dubai Pulse portal, where the department publishes the same register as a dataset, is the one official page read for this guide that explains the fields. It says the dataset records all sales, mortgage, inheritance, merge, separation and sub-separation transactions registered by the department, that its source is the department's TABU system, and that its update frequency is daily. Its field notes describe two levels of classification:

• a transaction group, described as the high-level group, with sales, mortgages and gifts given as examples;
• a procedure name, described as the transaction sub-type, with pre-registration sale, delayed sale, update mortgage and release mortgage given as examples.

Those examples carry a practical lesson. A mortgage row is not necessarily a new loan: "update mortgage" and "release mortgage" are procedures in the same group, so a count of mortgage transactions includes changes to existing mortgages and their release. A count of sales, in the same way, includes several sub-types of sale. The page gives examples only, not a full list of procedures, so the exact content of each group is an open point that the downloaded rows themselves settle: the sub-type column is there to be read.

The same page defines the money columns. "Actual worth" is the transaction price. The price per square metre is a separate column, as is the transaction area in square metres. Two columns that look like rent, the rent value and the rent price per square metre, are described as the mortgage value and mortgage price per square metre in lease-to-own procedures; they are not rents paid by tenants.

It also explains the party counts. Role 1 is given as the seller or the mortgagor, role 2 as the buyer or the mortgagee, and role 3 as a lessee or a usufructuary. The columns listed on the page give numbers of parties; none of them is a name.

One point on dates: the dataset's own metadata, as read on 10 October 2026, shows a creation date of 6 April 2022 and a last update of 26 April 2024, while describing the feed as daily. The date in each row, called the instance date, is defined as the registration date. A transaction is therefore counted on the day it is registered, which is not the day a price was agreed.

Off-plan and ready: the registration type

The second filter splits the register in two. The department's open data page calls the two values Ready and Off Plan. The Dubai Pulse field notes describe the same field as "off-plan or existing property". The Building table uses a third wording, Completed and Off Plan.

Three practical consequences follow from the pages.

First, the split is a property of the registration, not of the buyer or of the price. An off-plan row records a sale of a property registered as not yet completed; the Dubai Pulse notes give "pre-registration sale" as an example of a sales sub-type, and the Unit and Building tables each carry a pre-registration number column.

Second, neither official page says how payment plans or later price changes are reflected in the registered amount of an off-plan sale, so that is an open point.

Third, the split changes the picture depending on whether volume or value is measured. The October 2023 edition of Mo'asher, the edition of the index document read for this guide, shows it clearly.

That month the document counted 6,539 off-plan transactions worth AED 13.820 billion and 5,601 existing-property transactions worth AED 25.705 billion. Off-plan was the larger half by number and the smaller half by value. A worked example from those four figures: dividing value by number gives about AED 2.11 million per off-plan transaction and about AED 4.59 million per existing one, against about AED 3.26 million for the month as a whole. These are simple averages of everything counted, and the document does not say which property types the totals cover, so they describe the mix of what was registered and not the price of a typical home.

How Mo'asher, the sales price index, is built

Mo'asher is described by the Dubai Land Department as Dubai's official sales price index. The department's announcement of 8 June 2020, which presented the second edition, says it is produced with that partner and that it covers the residential sector in three series: Overall Dubai, Apartments, and Villas/Townhouses. The base year is 2012. The monthly series takes January 2012 as its base month and the quarterly series takes the first quarter of 2012.

The index is written as a ratio to that base. The announcement gave the residential index at 1.115 in April 2020 and described the average sales price that month, AED 1,078,398, as 11.5 per cent above the 2012 base. A value of 1.115 therefore reads as "11.5 per cent above January 2012", and a value under 1 reads as below the base: the same announcement put the Villas/Townhouses quarterly index at 0.991 in the first quarter of 2020.

The October 2023 edition sets out the method. It describes the index as a hedonic double-imputation Fisher index. In plain terms:

1. A hedonic regression estimates how much each attribute of a home contributes to its price. The document names view, size and number of bedrooms, and says that location is harder to control for.
2. A Laspeyres index is computed, which weights by the sales of the base period.
3. A Paasche index is computed, which weights by the sales of the current period.
4. The Fisher index is the geometric mean of the two, meaning the square root of their product.

A worked example with invented numbers, to show the last step only: if the Laspeyres reading were 1.60 and the Paasche reading 1.50, their product is 2.40 and its square root, the Fisher reading, is 1.549. The result always sits between the two.

The reason for all this is the mix problem described above. If more large villas are sold one month than the month before, the average registered price rises even when no home has gained value. A hedonic index tries to remove that effect by pricing attributes rather than averaging whatever happened to sell.

Reading one edition: October 2023

The department's document for October 2023 gives three index values, each with an "index price" in dirhams.

Several things can be read from it, and each with care.

The index value is the measure of movement. Set against the April 2020 values in the department's 2020 announcement, a worked example gives the distance travelled between the two editions: the overall series went from 1.115 to 1.544, a rise of 38.5 per cent; apartments from 1.182 to 1.686, a rise of 42.6 per cent; villas and townhouses from 1.05 to 1.559, a rise of 48.5 per cent. These compare two published editions; whether the earlier values were later revised is not stated in either document.

The index price is a companion figure, not a quotation. A second worked example shows why it should not be treated as mechanical. Dividing the October 2023 overall index price of AED 1,438,846 by 1.544 gives an implied base of about AED 931,895. Doing the same with the April 2020 figures, AED 1,078,398 divided by 1.115, gives about AED 967,173. The two implied bases differ by roughly AED 35,000, so the price and the index are not linked by one fixed base price across editions. Neither document explains the relation, which is an open point; it is one more reason to quote the index for change and to leave the dirham figure as an indication.

The transaction counts in the same document are a different instrument sharing the page. The 12,140 transactions and AED 39.525 billion of October 2023 were reported as 40.02 per cent higher by number and 56.18 per cent higher by value than a year earlier. Value rose faster than volume, which says the mix or the prices or both moved; the count alone cannot say which, and that is exactly what the index beside it is for. The document also says that apartments made up about 87 per cent of sales transactions and villas and townhouses about 13 per cent, attributing that split to its partner's data.

One caution about the document itself: its year-to-date growth figures appear twice with different values, 43.92 per cent by number and 57.96 per cent by value in one passage, and the year-on-year pair repeated in another. The year-on-year pair is the one used here.

The rental side: one index and two tools

Rents have their own index and their own tools, and they should not be confused.

The Residential Rental Performance Index is the rental counterpart of Mo'asher. Its page on the department's site says it is built with a hedonic regression model, at monthly, quarterly and yearly frequencies, with 2013 as the base, written "Index 2013 = 1". The page names the same partner alongside the department. Its reference period, as read on 10 October 2026, is the third quarter of 2022, when the overall quarterly index stood at 0.988 with an index price of AED 53,843, apartments at 1.011 with AED 49,001, and villas and townhouses at 0.883 with AED 137,828. The page reports the quarterly figure as 2.17 per cent up on the previous quarter. Its monthly figures run to November 2022: 0.996 overall, with an index price of AED 54,886.

The same page counts leases. It gives 140,685 leases for the third quarter of 2022, up 13.59 per cent from 123,856 in the second quarter; 58.71 per cent were new and 41.29 per cent renewals, 87.33 per cent annual and 12.67 per cent non-annual, 71.78 per cent residential and 27.12 per cent commercial. A worked example: 58.71 per cent of 140,685 is about 82,596 new leases, leaving about 58,089 renewals. The open data Rents table lets the two be separated with its Version filter.

The rental index calculator on the department's site is a tool for one property. Its residential tab asks for the contract end date, the property type, a way to find the property (a DEWA premise number, an Ejari contract number or an area), the building and community, the number of bedrooms and the current annual rent in dirhams. It has further tabs for commercial property, industrial property, industrial land and staff accommodation, and a location map. The page itself carries no definition, no method and no figures.

The Smart Rental Index 2025 was launched by the Dubai Land Department on 2 January 2025. The department's announcement describes it as covering all residential areas in Dubai, including special development zones and free zones, and says indices for commercial and industrial property are planned. It is built, according to the announcement, with artificial intelligence and a building classification that rates each building on its technical and structural characteristics, the quality of its finishes and maintenance, its location, and its services and facilities, such as cleanliness and parking management. The announcement recalls that rent increases follow a 2013 decree and depend on the gap between the current rent and the average market rent: a rent less than 10 per cent below the average allows no increase, and the highest band allows up to 20 per cent. It also reports that more than 900,000 rental contracts were registered in 2024, up 8 per cent on the year before.

So the performance index measures the movement of the rental market; the calculator and the Smart Rental Index bear on what one tenancy may be renewed at. The announcement of the Smart Rental Index does not publish a market-wide series, and the performance index is not a tool for a rent review.

The statistics archive: buildings, not prices

The Dubai Pulse portal also holds a statistics archive. Its buildings dataset is described as covering buildings and housing units in Dubai, with a field survey (population register) given as its source. Its columns are short: an identifier, the building type and the year. The page defines its types: a single-floor building has one level and excludes villas and Arabic homes; a multiple-floor building has two or more levels and is used for residential, commercial or hotel purposes.

The page is frank about its limits. It marks the dataset as obsolete and no longer updated, for study and educational use only; the metadata shows it created on 19 July 2018 and last updated on 11 April 2022. It is a description of the housing stock at past dates and carries no price, rent or transaction.

The current real estate tables of Dubai's statistics body, the Dubai Data and Statistics Establishment, were not reached during the research for this guide. What they contain, and their dates, is therefore left as an open point rather than described from memory.

The dates the pages carry

A figure is only as current as its page. Read together on 10 October 2026, the official pages show a wide spread of dates:

• the department's Real Estate Data page carries no headline figure at all; it is a live search, and the site footer shows a last update of 7 October 2026;
• the Dubai Pulse transactions dataset shows a last update of 26 April 2024 in its metadata, with a daily update frequency;
• the Mo'asher edition read here is October 2023; the department's index service page did not load during research, so whether a later edition is posted there could not be checked;
• the department's Research page, which offers the report types Annual Report and Dubai Commercial Property Price Index, returned "No Data found";
• the Residential Rental Performance Index page shows the third quarter of 2022 and November 2022;
• the Smart Rental Index announcement is dated 2 January 2025 and its contract count is for 2024.

None of the pages read for this guide showed a figure for 2026. The open data tables are searched by date range, so current rows are a matter of running the search; the point here is narrower. When an index value is quoted, its month belongs in the same sentence.

What each source can and cannot tell an agent

A few reading habits follow directly from the pages.

Before quoting a transaction total, the three choices behind it have to be known: which transaction type, which registration type, which usage. "All" on each filter gives the largest number and the least precise one.

Before comparing two periods, the unit has to match. Number and value move differently, as October 2023 shows, and an average of amounts moves with the mix of what was sold.

Before quoting an index, its base and month go with it, and so does its limit: the index documents themselves say they are not to be used for pricing or for investment decisions. An index describes the market; for an individual property, the registered sales of similar homes in the Transactions table are the closer evidence, and how far they fit depends on the case.

Before using a rent figure, new and renewed contracts are separated, because the increase scale that the department's announcement recalls is tied to the gap between a current rent and the average market rent.

A transaction count says how much was registered, an index says how prices moved, and a calculator says something about one property. No single one of them answers all three questions.

Open points

The official pages leave several things unstated, and they are listed here so that no reader takes silence for an answer. The full list of procedures inside the sales, mortgages and gifts groups is given only by example. No page read defines how an off-plan sale's payment plan is reflected in its registered amount. The relation between a Mo'asher index value and its index price is not explained, and the worked example above shows it is not a fixed multiple. The middle bands of the rent increase scale are not set out in the Smart Rental Index announcement. The latest Mo'asher edition could not be confirmed. And the statistics establishment's own current real estate tables were not read. Each of these is a question for the body that publishes the figure.

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.

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