The Off-Plan Share of Dubai Sales Hit 76 Per Cent: What It Does to Price Evidence

In the second quarter of 2026, off-plan homes made up 76 per cent of Dubai's residential sales by number, according to betterhomes' Q2 2026 market report. The off-plan share of Dubai sales rose because resales fell far harder than new launches, not because off-plan boomed. Off-plan sales fell 12 per cent year on year. Resales fell 59 per cent.

The practical consequence for a buyer is about evidence, not enthusiasm. When three in four sales are of homes that do not yet exist, the resale market, which is the usual check on whether a launch price is fair, becomes thin. A thin comparison set is easier to misread. A buyer should widen what they compare against rather than lean on a headline average.

The off-plan share of Dubai sales in Q2 2026

The report covers April to June 2026. It does not name its data source, and it does not define "transactions" or "prime", so the figures below are betterhomes' own. Total residential value was AED 84.9 billion, down 45 per cent year on year.

Q2 2026	Transactions	Share of sales	Change year on year
Off-plan	26,338	76%	down 12%
Secondary (resale)	8,512	24%	down 59%
Total residential	34,850	100%	down 31%

Source: betterhomes, Q2 2026 Dubai residential market report.

Publishers measure the same quarter differently. Khaleej Times, citing JLL, reported Dh87.9 billion of sales value and a different split of the fall.

Fall in Q2 2026 transactions, year on year	betterhomes	JLL, via Khaleej Times
Off-plan	12%	23.1%
Resale	59%	41.8%
All transactions	31%	28.6%

The two sources agree on the direction and on one point: resale fell harder than off-plan. They disagree on how much, and neither definition is published in full in the articles. Quote a share, not a false precision. The 76 per cent is betterhomes' figure for a defined quarter, not a measure the whole market shares. A separate betterhomes piece from May 2026 also quotes 76 per cent, for an earlier month of Dubai Land Department (DLD) transactions, up from 72 per cent the month before. It is the same number from a different measure.

Why the share rose

A share is a ratio, so it can rise while its top number falls. Off-plan sales fell by 12 per cent. The share moved because the bottom number, total sales, shrank faster.

A rough check shows how far. Working backwards from betterhomes' published changes, the same quarter a year earlier held about 29,900 off-plan sales and about 20,800 resales, which puts off-plan at about 59 per cent of sales. That is our arithmetic from rounded percentages, not a figure the report states.

So the move from roughly 59 to 76 per cent is real, but it is mostly a story about resale leaving the market. Anyone quoting "off-plan now dominates" as a sign of rising demand for new launches has read the ratio the wrong way round. Anyone quoting it as distress has made the opposite error: off-plan volumes fell by about one-eighth on betterhomes' count, which is a softer quarter, not a collapse. The May piece above gives the reason off-plan holds up better. A developer has to keep selling to keep a project funded and on schedule, which sets a floor under off-plan activity. A resale seller can wait, hold the price or withdraw the listing. betterhomes sells off-plan property, so treat its reading as one informed view and not a neutral audit.

How a thin resale market weakens price evidence

Off-plan prices are asking prices set by the seller of a product that has no resale history. The best independent check is what comparable completed homes in the same area actually change hands for. That check works when the resale market is active. With 8,512 resale deals across the whole emirate in a quarter, many communities will have a handful of comparables, or none from the past three months.

Two further things follow.

• Registration lags agreement. DLD records a sale when it is registered, so a quarter's figures partly reflect agreements made earlier.
• Payment plans are part of the price. A lower upfront share is a financing term. It does not make the unit cheaper, and it can make two launches look closer in price than they are.

A citywide figure is not a community's demand

The third thing is the one buyers most often miss: one number can hold several markets. betterhomes reports that price per square foot rose across most tracked communities, with villa communities leading and Palm Jumeirah Garden Homes up 37 per cent, in the same quarter that total value fell 45 per cent. At the top of the market the report records 578 deals above AED 15 million, down 59 per cent, which it describes as a pullback from an exceptional prior year, and off-plan luxury sales up 27 per cent. The report does not say which price threshold defines its off-plan luxury figure, so the two are not strictly comparable.

Measure in the same quarter	Direction
Total residential value	down 45%
Transactions above AED 15 million	down 59%
Off-plan luxury sales (threshold not stated)	up 27%
Price per square foot in most tracked communities	up

A citywide share or average therefore says little about whether demand in a particular community is rising or falling. That answer sits in the community's own transactions, and in a thin market there may be few of them.

What a buyer can use instead

When resale comparables are sparse, the evidence has to come from several places at once.

Question	Where the answer sits
What do completed homes nearby sell for?	DLD transaction records for the building or community, not a citywide average
What does the developer's earlier phase now resell for?	Resale of the developer's own handed-over projects
What is the plan actually worth?	The payment schedule converted into a single total cost, including fees
Is the developer delivering?	Its record against its own milestone dates, covered in our look at how late off-plan projects run

The second row matters most in practice. A developer that has already handed over a neighbouring phase has produced the one thing a launch cannot: a resale price for its own finished product. If those homes resell below what the earlier buyers paid, or do not resell at all, that is more informative than any average. If they resell above, the premium is worth understanding before paying for the next phase.

None of this needs a forecast. It needs the buyer to ask what the number was measured against.

What the shift does not change

A high off-plan share is not a warning on its own, and it is not an endorsement. Launches still differ in location, developer record, handover timeline and payment terms. Funds still sit in a regulated escrow account and are released against construction progress, a mechanism we set out in our explainer on escrow.

What changes is the weight any single data point can bear. A quarter in which resale contracts by 59 per cent says something about resale sentiment. It says much less about whether a particular tower is priced fairly. That question is answered unit by unit, against several comparison sets, by someone with no reason to prefer one launch over another.

Questions to put to any comparison

Whoever presents a price comparison, whether a developer, a portal or an advisor, can be asked the same four things. What period does it cover? How many completed sales sit behind it? Is it a citywide figure or the specific community? Does the price include the cost of the payment plan? A comparison that cannot answer all four is an opinion with a chart attached.