Dubai property transaction value hits 4-year high in May

Dubai real estate market recorded the highest total sales transaction value in May 2021 in the last four years, reaching over Dh11.11 billion.

May 2021 saw 4,429 transactions worth Dh11.11 billion, 8.1 per cent less than April 2021 in terms of volume and 1.4 per cent more in terms of value. This brings the year-to-date total to 20,989 transactions worth Dh47.19 billion, according to the latest data released by Property Finder.

It said the total number of transactions grew by 205 per cent and the total value of transactions has grown by 324 per cent since May 2020. To break this down, the off-plan market sales transactions volume grew by 74 per cent since last year and the secondary market, which has been in high demand since the pandemic started, has grown by over 466 per cent.

“One indication that Dubai’s real estate market has rebounded is that the average transaction value for a single property has increased, 16.77 per cent for villa/townhouses and 17.18 per cent for apartments in one year,” according to Lynnette Sacchetto, director of research and data at Property Finder.

“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 per cent increase in total volume of sales transactions and a whopping 83.8 per cent increase in total value of sales transactions when comparing May 2021 to May 2019,” said Sacchetto.

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

In May 2021, 62 per cent of all transactions were for secondary/ready properties and 38 per cent were for off-plan properties.

The off-plan market transacted 1,674 properties worth a total of Dh2.58 billion and the secondary market transacted 2,755 properties worth a total of Dh8.53 billion. Comparing this to April 2021, the number of off-plan transactions in May decreased by 13.4 per cent and the secondary/ready property transactions decreased 4.54 per cent. But the value for the Secondary properties did increase by 8.32 per cent.

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 per cent to Dh1,542,411 and the average transaction price for secondary property has increased by 15 per cent to Dh3,094,274.

According to proprietary Property finder demand data, the top areas of interest in terms of searches for villas/townhouses in May 2021 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.

-waheedabbas@khaleejtimes.com