Value of property transactions in Dubai hits four-year high for May

Top areas of interest in terms of searches for apartments in May were Dubai Marina, Downtown Dubai, Palm Jumeirah, Business Bay and Jumeirah Village Circle.

May saw the highest value of property transactions in Dubai in four years, according to Property Finder, with the total real estate spend in the emirate in excess of AED11.11 billion ($3bn).

The latest research revealed there were 4,429 deals throughout the month, which was 8.1 percent less than April in terms of volume, but up 1.4 percent in value.

It takes the total number of transactions for the year-to-date to 20,989, worth AED47.19bn ($12.8bn).

In terms of the number of deals, that equates to a 205 percent growth since May 2020, while the total value is up 324 percent.

Off-plan market sales transactions volume grew by 74 percent since last year and the secondary market, which has been in high demand since the coronavirus pandemic started, has grown by over 466 percent.

“One indication that Dubai’s real estate market has rebounded is that the average transaction value for a single property has increased, 16.77 percent for villa/townhouses and 17.18 percent for apartments in one year,” said Lynnette A Sacchetto, director of Research & Data.

“When looking over the past few years, we have not only seen increases since 2020 but from 2019 as well. To put things further into perspective, we have seen a 36.5 percent increase in total volume of sales transactions and a whopping 83.8 percent increase in total value of sales transactions when comparing May 2021 to May 2019.

“When looking at total values alone, the average off-plan value has increased by 6.59 percent and average secondary transaction value has increased by 34.64 percent when compared to May 2019.”

In May 2021, 62 percent of all transactions were for secondary/ready properties and 38 percent were for off-plan properties. According to the latest statistics, the off-plan market transacted 1,674 properties worth a total of AED2.58bn ($702.5m) and the secondary market transacted 2,755 properties worth AED8.53bn ($2.3bn).

Compared to the previous month, the number of off-plan transactions in May decreased by 13.4 percent and the secondary/ready property transactions decreased 4.54 percent. However, the value for secondary properties increased by 8.32 percent.

Over the past three months the percentage between off-plan and ready properties has stayed at a consistent 38 percent to 62 percent respectively. The average transaction price for off-plan property has, however, reduced by 11.6 percent to AED1,542,411 ($420,000) and the average transaction price for secondary property has increased by 15 percent to AED3,094,274 ($843,000).

According to proprietary Property finder demand data, the top areas of interest in terms of searches for villas/townhouses in May were Dubai Hills Estate, Arabian Ranches, Palm Jumeirah, Damac Hills and Mohamed bin Rashid City. As for apartments for the same period, the top areas of interest were Dubai Marina, Downtown Dubai, Palm Jumeirah, Business Bay and Jumeirah Village Circle.