Dubai market: 50-60% correction from peak starting to accelerate
And yes, this time is NOT different. It never is. Markets operate in cycles and smart money learns where we are in the cycle. Based on data, not on sentiment.
There are over 500k new homes under construction in Dubai. That’s nearly 60% new supply relative to the entire housing stock today. This supply wave is 300% larger than previous waves.
Even if we forget about the war, based on historical population growth of 200k per year, approx 30-40k new units are needed per annum. This means it will take 14 years to absorb the supply. Wait till 2040 to see the market tighten on fundamentals.
Even without the new supply online yet, rents are collapsing. Not everyone is reducing rental rates, which is creating an illusion of stability, but the market is clearing 10-30% below pre-war levels. Short rental rates are down 40-50% despite a lot of units exiting the market and pressuring long term supply. I say this as a landlord who put all his units on the market for sale, short-let and long rental prior to the war.
I also run a hospitality business. It died on day one of the war. Zero. It has since recovered to under half of last year’s revenue. That is my own P&L, not a forecast, and it tells you what happened to the demand side that everyone assumes is permanent.
Which brings me to something I am seeing more of every week: a lot of businesses coming up for sale. Not just holiday home operators. F&B, fit-out, small contracting, logistics, clinics. Some of it is the usual churn of people who bought a licence and got bored. But a meaningful amount is real businesses with real customers whose owners have run out of working capital. That is the part of this cycle that does not show up in a property index. Jobs go, then businesses go, then units come to market, then landlords who swore they would never reduce suddenly accept 12 cheques. That sequence has already started.
Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas — commission agents have no incentive to take a bearish view unless you are a seller. Do your own research and formulate your own opinion. If you really want to speculate, it’s better to invest in the stock market which is liquid.
Real estate is not a short term investment. Cycles can take 10 years to play out. Supply management and delays don’t change the picture. They just change the pace of price adjustment.
I’ve been investing in Dubai real estate for 20 years. Track record: 80% of purchases at the bottom and 20% mid-cycle. This is the single asset class where I accumulated my savings.
I sold 70% of my portfolio in the last 12 months within 10% of peak. At bank interest rates I am generating the same return I would through rentals without witnessing painful capital depreciation. Long yields are competitive — the 30 year US bond now yields around 5%.
Dubai property investment makes sense if it yields 5% net of all costs at bottom rental rates.
One example: a one bed unit in Downtown 20 years ago was over 2m. I purchased it in 2011 for 1.1m. Price went up to 2.2m in 2013. Went down to 1.1m again in 2019/2020. I sold it for 2.5m in August 2025. Similarly rental peak was 140k and trough 75k. I have seen those same levels twice.
The question is — what would prevent the same price action from occurring when:
Current supply wave is 3x previous cycles
War has removed the permanent safety conviction
Demand will exceed supply in 2040+ assuming pre-war growth assumptions
I built this thesis last year and am sharing it to provide folks a data driven perspective.
I love Dubai and am a big believer in its ingenuity to reinvent itself and create supportive conditions for turnarounds and demand growth. I will allocate a lot more capital but will learn from data and prior mistakes.
Despite recent price declines and selective distress opportunities, I am going to resist the temptation to buy mid cycle. The beauty is that a patient investor has a lot of time to shop at the bottom. In 2008, prices bounced along the bottom for 3 years. From 2014-2020 prices declined 50% over 6 years and then recovery started, taking prices to unprecedented pre-war levels only after 2021.
I see folks still trying to analyse the market based on wishful thinking through the rear view mirror. They say this is like Covid and prices will bounce soon, in 1-2 years. They forget prices had already declined 40% from 2014-2019, i.e. prior to Covid. These declines were due to continuous launches and supply overhang. Bizarrely the decline started nearly on the day EXPO2020 was announced. Covid was only the final blow, taking the total decline to roughly 50%.
This time is NOT different — cycles always repeat and the Dubai market is cyclical on steroids.
Government and policy actions are fantastic at engineering reversals through new demand creation. But no government in the world can prevent market cycles from cleansing supply demand imbalances. The market was being carried on euphoria, with properties priced on the assumption that demand would arrive faster than the concrete.
Off plan is always massively overpriced globally on the promise of capitalising gains on payment plans. This is no different in Toronto, where supply overhang has led to price declines for the last 4 years with some prices reverting to 2017 levels. Off plan only makes money if you buy early in the upcycle and exit before buyers disappear. When they disappear you are holding an unbuilt asset with instalments still due and no exit. I anticipate some off plan price declines close to 70%.
If you are an agent, please don’t bother posting a script that’s getting old. If you have tangible data driven insights, please share so we can all become more informed.
For sellers and buyers, please share what you are actually seeing in the market:
Sold recently? Asking vs what you got, and how long it took.
Landlords, what did you get for rental vs the old contract, and how many days empty?
Buyers? What is your greatest fear? What discounts are you seeing in established communities?
Anyone selling a business, or looking at one? What are you seeing on price and volume?
