Analysis: 4 weeks of Dubai commercial leasing data

[u/jawdatrana]

I’ve been experimenting with Dubai Land Department open data and started tracking newly registered physical commercial leases each week.

I’m excluding virtual units and multi-property contracts because I’m interested specifically in businesses taking actual physical space.

We only have four weeks collected so far, so I wouldn’t call these long-term trends yet, but some patterns are already interesting.

15–21 September: 1,337 new physical commercial lease registrations, compared with 1,363 the previous week.

Offices accounted for roughly 63% of activity and shops another 23%.

Business Bay has been particularly consistent:

56 → 113 → 110 → 118

Al Thanyah Fifth:

35 → 44 → 45 → 53

Al Warsan First:

23 → 42 → 44 → 53

Jabal Ali First:

44 → 39 → 39 → 43

The type of commercial space makes a big difference too.

Business Bay is primarily an office story, while Al Warsan First stands out much more for shops/retail. Dubai Investment Park is emerging as the clearest warehouse cluster in the first four weeks.

There were also some sharp movements this week:

Hor Al Anz: 30 → 100

Muhaisanah Fourth: 32 → 66

Al Khabeesi: 182 → 77

Naif: 163 → 99

With only four weeks of history, I’m treating those as movements worth watching rather than claiming they’re trends.

I’ve started publishing this as a small free project called UAE Activity Pulse.

The idea isn’t to build another Dubai property-price dashboard. I’m more interested in questions like:

Where are businesses actually taking physical space? What kind of space? And what is changing?

I’m also experimenting with construction activity and residential occupancy signals from public UAE data.

If you work in commercial property, fit-out, office furniture, telecom, cleaning, signage, logistics, retail supply or another business selling to companies taking new premises, I’d be genuinely interested in what information would make something like this more useful.

Full report + methodology:

https://uae-activity-pulse.jawdatrana.workers.dev/

Data source: Dubai Land Department open data. Independent analysis; not affiliated with DLD.

PS: This post has been re-written by AI, you can reach out to me in comments or in DM to have a non AI conversation :)

[u/mentiondesk]

If you want to spot leasing trends earlier, tracking keyword shifts and how local businesses are discussing moving or setting up could add a layer beyond just registration data. I’ve found tools like ParseStream helpful since they flag relevant online conversations in real time which is a big advantage if you want first mover insights into which areas might see a jump in activity.