Market Intelligence
Commercial Real Estate Index
The first independent benchmark of registered sale prices of existing offices and shops in Dubai, from DLD data.
Market Intelligence
Mitchell's Dubai Commercial Real Estate Index
Market Intelligence
Commercial Price Index
Mitchell's Dubai Commercial Real Estate Index: the median price per square foot of existing offices and shops registered with the Dubai Land Department, month by month since January 2009. Choose the segment, the smoothing and the time range below.
Index value · 3-month pooled · All commercial
224.7
Three months to October 2026 · ▼ 10.9 (−4.6%) vs three months earlier · based on 567 trimmed sales (3M window)
3-month pooled series · All commercial
All commercial full history · 3-month pooled · 2022 calendar-year average = 100
Three months to October 2026 · index 224.7 · median 1,907 AED / sq ft · 567 trimmed sales (3M window)
index (left axis) sales registered in the month (right axis) fewer than 30 sales November 2026, provisional
Source: Dubai Land Department sale transactions, published via data.dubai — Existing-property offices and shops (reg_type = 'Existing Properties', property_sub_type Office/Shop, unit sales); mcin_commercial_txns_raw ∪ dld_transactions, one sale counted once on the canonical transaction key. Median AED per sq ft per calendar month after a 1%/99% trim applied per segment and calendar quarter and the removal of sales priced below 15% of that quarter's trimmed median. Dates are the Dubai Land Department's own registration dates. Where a sale reaches us twice — once in DLD's bulk export and once in its daily feed — we keep the bulk record, and DLD registers on working days, so a sale agreed at a weekend carries the following working day; the 3-month view is a pooled median over the trailing three months, indexed per segment to its 2022 calendar-year average = 100. Register read to 6 November 2026; series January 2009 to October 2026 complete, November 2026 provisional. Compiled 7 November 2026.
Indicative — a trimmed monthly median of Dubai Land Department sale registrations for existing-property offices and shops, indexed per segment to its 2022 calendar-year average = 100; within each segment and quarter the highest and lowest one per cent of sales are set aside, and so is any sale recorded at less than 15% of what the rest of that segment fetched over the quarter, which is what stops a block of units registered far below the market from setting a month’s median. Not mix-adjusted: a month heavy in prime stock reads higher even if nothing repriced, and retail and the thinnest months rest on small samples, which the chart marks. The register’s “Existing Properties” flag is taken as filed: the Land Department publishes no open primary-versus-secondary key, so that flag can carry a developer’s delayed-sale registration alongside genuine standing-stock sales. The month in progress is provisional and excluded from every headline; the newest complete month can still revise as late registrations land. Direction and level, not a valuation of any one property.
Next step
Value a specific commercial asset
We'll run the registered comparables, yield and liquidity for any Dubai office floor, retail unit or whole building you're weighing — off-market stock included.
With the register read to 6 November 2026, the headline reading is the three-month pooled one, and it covers the three months to October 2026: all commercial at a median of AED 1,907.2 per sq ft, an index of 224.69 on 567 trimmed sales; office at a median of AED 1,851.2 per sq ft, an index of 222.28 on 420 trimmed sales; retail (shops) at a median of AED 2,269.2 per sq ft, an index of 243.3 on 145 trimmed sales. That is the view the instrument above opens on, and it is the reading to quote.
The single-month series is the same data without the pooling, and it moves further because it rests on a third of the sales. For October 2026 alone: all commercial at a median of AED 1,956.3 per sq ft, an index of 230.47 on 181 trimmed sales; office at a median of AED 1,949.3 per sq ft, an index of 234.06 on 137 trimmed sales; retail (shops) at a median of AED 2,311.9 per sq ft, an index of 247.88 on 44 trimmed sales. Retail is the thinner of the two sub-segments and moves further from month to month, so read the shop line on the three-month view and beside its sale counts rather than on a single point.
None of this is a valuation. The index gives you the direction and the level of registered pricing across a whole segment; it cannot tell you what one floor in one tower is worth, because it is not adjusted for the mix of stock registering in any given month. What it does do for a buyer is set the frame for a negotiation — whether the segment you are buying into has moved up, down or sideways across the window you care about — and test what a seller says about the market against what the register shows. Then work the comparables building by building: the commercial valuation estimator is built for that. Tell us the building you are looking at and we will pull the registered comparables behind it — the sales that completed, not the prices that were asked — before you put a number on the table.
The benchmark
Introduction
The Mitchell's Dubai Commercial Real Estate Index is a publicly accessible benchmark of unit-level registered sale prices of existing offices and shops in Dubai. It is the first independent benchmark of its kind made freely available to the market. The Index draws on Dubai Land Department transaction records published via data.dubai and covers the period from January 2009 through the current month, with three published sub-indices: All Commercial, Office, and Retail. A companion rentals view, built from Ejari lease registrations, sits alongside it on the same instrument.
Our objective is straightforward. Dubai's residential property market is well-served by public benchmarks. Its commercial market is not. The Index addresses that gap, with a transparent methodology and unedited source data.
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The measure
What The Index Measures
The Index reports the median price per square foot of qualifying registered sales of existing commercial units in Dubai. Hotel and serviced-apartment assets, which the Dubai Land Department records under its own hospitality sub-types rather than as offices or shops, are not part of the Index — these behave more like residential investments and would distort a benchmark of true commercial property values. Land transactions and whole-building transactions are also excluded: a plot is priced over land area and a building over built area, and neither belongs in a per-square-foot benchmark of units.
Every monthly point is normalised so that each segment's 2022 calendar-year average equals 100. An Index value of 200 means median commercial unit prices in that month were twice their average 2022 level. The current Index value, its month, and the underlying transaction count are surfaced directly in the readout above the chart at the top of this page.
Why We Built It
Several public benchmarks track Dubai's residential market. The Mo'asher index, published quarterly by the Dubai Land Department, is the official residential reference. DXBInteract, Property Monitor, and individual brokerage research desks publish their own residential figures. None of these publish a continuous, transparent commercial-only index.
The gap matters. Commercial real estate in Dubai trades at materially different yields, on a different supply curve, and against a different mix of investor demand than residential. Institutional investors, family offices, and developers evaluating Dubai's commercial pipeline require a benchmark calibrated to their asset class — not a residential-led indicator that obscures commercial cycles. Mid-market investors considering a transition from residential portfolios into commercial holdings need a comparable historical reference to assess timing and relative value.
The Index has been designed to serve both. The methodology is intentionally simple, the source data is unedited, and the construction is fully disclosed in the section above.
Using it
How To Read The Index
Two views sit at the top of the instrument above: Prices, built from the Land Department's sale register, and Rentals, built from Ejari lease registrations.
Each point on the price chart is one month's trimmed median — the middle of what actually traded, with the extreme 1% tails removed because the register's outer edges include data-entry noise. A median is robust to outliers in a way an average is not, but it still moves with the mix of what sold as well as with price. The three-month view pools the trailing three months and is the default; the Monthly toggle shows the raw trace. The range controls — one year, three years, five years and the full history back to January 2009 — set the window the chart draws. The month in progress is drawn provisional while it fills; treat the latest complete month as the settled reading.
Three sub-indices are selectable.
Sub-index
All Commercial
Combines Office and Retail transactions into a single headline value. This is the broadest measure of commercial unit prices in Dubai and the appropriate reference for portfolio-level analysis.
The case
The Commercial Opportunity
Commercial real estate in Dubai is structurally underrepresented in private investor portfolios. Most discretionary capital from regional and overseas individual investors flows into residential — apartments and villas in well-known master communities. Commercial transactions, by contrast, are concentrated among institutional buyers: real estate investment trusts, family offices, sovereign wealth funds, and developer-affiliated entities. The information gap is partly cultural — residential is what private investors physically inhabit and intuitively underwrite — and partly structural, because commercial yield benchmarks have not historically been published in a form private investors could easily read. This Index is one effort to close that second gap.
The asset class merits closer attention now for a specific reason. Dubai's residential pipeline has expanded materially over the past five years: master developers continue to launch new towers and communities, and end-buyer demand, while strong, is no longer pricing in the same scarcity premium it did during the post-2020 recovery. Yields on standard residential investment formats — one- and two-bedroom apartments in Marina, JVC, JLT, and similar — have compressed accordingly. Commercial real estate has followed a different trajectory. New office and retail supply in Dubai's primary commercial nodes — Business Bay, DIFC, JLT, Downtown — has been more measured, and yields on prime office and retail units are commonly four to six percentage points above comparable residential. By mature-market standards that is an unusually wide spread.
For residential portfolio investors weighing diversification, this is the basis of the conversation. It is not an argument for wholesale reallocation — residential and commercial play different roles in a balanced property portfolio. It is an argument for considering commercial as the marginal next purchase rather than another residential unit, particularly where the existing portfolio is already concentrated in a single residential asset class. The articles below examine the supply and yield dynamics behind these conditions in greater depth.
Provenance
Source And Attribution
Transaction data is sourced from the Dubai Land Department via data.dubai under the Dubai Open Data Licence. The Index methodology, weighting, and presentation are proprietary to Mitchell's Commercial Real Estate.
Every filter, window and base behind the chart above, read from the same data file the chart renders, and the five things the series is not.
The specificationThe filters as they are written, read from the same data file the chart above renders.
Inputs
ScopeExisting-property offices and shops
- Source
- Dubai Land Department sale transactions, published via data.dubai
- Scope
- Existing-property offices and shops (reg_type = 'Existing Properties', property_sub_type Office/Shop, unit sales)
- One sale, counted once
- mcin_commercial_txns_raw ∪ dld_transactions, one sale counted once on the canonical transaction key
- Excluded
- Off-plan launch registrations, mortgages, gifts, land and whole-building sales, hospitality sub-types
Method
ScopeMedian AED per sq ft per calendar month
- Measure
- Median AED per sq ft per calendar month after a 1%/99% trim applied per segment and calendar quarter and the removal of sales priced below 15% of that quarter's trimmed median. Dates are the Dubai Land Department's own registration dates. Where a sale reaches us twice — once in DLD's bulk export and once in its daily feed — we keep the bulk record, and DLD registers on working days, so a sale agreed at a weekend carries the following working day; the 3-month view is a pooled median over the trailing three months
- Base
- Each segment's 2022 calendar-year average = 100
- History
- Monthly from January 2009; November 2026 is the month in progress, shown provisional
- Register read to
- 6 November 2026
- Low-confidence flag
- Any point resting on fewer than 30 trimmed sales
The limitsWhat the series cannot do, and which segment each caveat bites on.
- Every segment
Class boundary
“Existing Properties” is a flag the Dubai Land Department applies at registration and we take it as filed. The Land Department publishes no open primary-versus-secondary key, so that flag can carry a developer’s delayed-sale registration alongside genuine standing-stock sales. It is the cleanest separation available between standing stock and launch activity, and it is not a perfect one — which is why the instrument says so beside the chart rather than in a footnote.
- Every segment
Mix adjustment
A month in which more large, prime floor-plates happened to register reads higher than one in which more small secondary units did, even if nothing about the market changed. The trim removes the extremes; it does not correct the mix. Read it as a trend, and read the three-month view before the monthly one.
- Retail (shops)
Retail sample depth
Shops are a fraction of the office count in most months, so the retail line is noisier and more of its points carry the low-confidence mark. The mark is there to be read.
- Every segment
The newest months
The month in progress is provisional and excluded from every headline; the latest complete month can still revise as late registrations reach the register. Points older than three months are stable.
- Every segment
Not a valuation
A registered price is a historical fact about one transaction, in one building, on one day. It is evidence for a view about your asset. It is not a view about your asset.
ReferenceMethodology
The Mitchell's Dubai Commercial Real Estate Index ("the Index") is constructed from Dubai Land Department transaction records published via data.dubai. Each monthly point is the median AED-per-square-foot of registered sales of existing commercial units — the Office and Shop property sub-types — in that calendar month, after de-duplication and a 1% trim at each end of the quarter's distribution, indexed so that each segment's average over calendar 2022 equals 100. The default three-month view is a pooled median over the trailing three months' trimmed sales; the Monthly toggle exposes the unsmoothed monthly median. Off-plan sales are excluded: a developer's launch prices tomorrow's building at tomorrow's money, and blending them with existing-property sales would move the Index whenever the launch calendar moves rather than when the market does. Mortgage registrations and gift transfers are excluded because the amounts recorded on those rows are valuations or nominal figures, not prices a buyer paid. Land transactions and whole-building transactions are excluded because a plot is priced over land area and a building over built area — different units from a per-square-foot benchmark of standing commercial space.
Prices And Rentals
The instrument on this page carries two views. The Prices view is the Index itself, built from the Land Department's sale register as described above. The Rentals view is a companion series built from Ejari lease registrations: the median annual rent of registered office and retail leases, computed per quarter, shown separately for new leases and renewals, and indexed so that the first quarter of 2024 equals 100 for each segment. Ejari records the leased area of a contract in square metres, so that median is computed per square metre; the panel displays it per square foot by default, converted at the exact 10.7639 square feet in a square metre, and the sq ft / m² control above the chart switches back to the registered figure. The two views share the same discipline — register rows in, medians out, nothing modelled — but they are separate instruments reading separate registers, and their base periods differ for that reason.
Base Period
The price Index is normalised so that each segment's average over the 2022 calendar year equals 100. An annual base is used rather than a single month because commercial existing-property sale volume in any one month is thin enough for the mix of what sold to move the figure; a full year of transactions pins the base to something stable. The series begins in January 2009, the first month in which both the Office and the Shop sub-segments clear thirty registered sales: the register holds four qualifying rows in 2006, none in 2007 and 524 in 2008, too sparse to support an earlier start. The rentals series is rebased separately, at the first quarter of 2024 = 100.
Monthly Points And The Provisional Tail
The Index is published monthly. Commercial sales are a far thinner market than residential — a few hundred qualifying transactions in a typical quarter — so the default view pools the trailing three months before taking the median, and the unsmoothed monthly median sits behind the Monthly toggle for readers who want the raw trace. The headline value is the latest complete month. The month in progress is charted while it is still filling, drawn as provisional and excluded from the headline until it completes; because rows can also be registered late, the newest complete month may revise as the register catches up.
Sample Size
Each point carries its underlying transaction count, shown in the chart's readout, and a point resting on fewer than thirty trimmed sales is marked low-confidence on the chart. The Index reflects what was sold in that month, not what is for sale; in periods of low transaction volume, the Index is more sensitive to composition shifts, which is one of the reasons the month in progress is held as provisional until it completes.
Sub-Segment Indices
Office and Retail sub-segment indices are constructed identically to the headline All Commercial Index, but restricted to the relevant Dubai Land Department property sub-type — "Office" and "Shop" respectively. These are the two commercial unit sub-types with the register volume to support a published series; other sub-types are not published separately.
One Sale, Counted Once
The register publishes the same sale under two different transaction-number formats across its bulk and daily loads. Rows are matched on the transaction number's underlying components — procedure, group, serial and year — so a sale appearing in both loads is counted once in the medians, with the bulk row's attributes kept.
Currency
All published figures are in AED. Prices are dirhams per square foot. Rentals are dirhams per year over the leased area, computed per square metre because that is the unit Ejari records, and shown per square foot by default with a control to switch to square metres — a unit conversion, at the exact 10.7639 square feet in a square metre, never a re-measurement. No currency conversions are applied.
An Indicative Index
The Index is a simple trimmed median and is not mix-adjusted: a month heavy in prime stock reads higher even if no individual building repriced. It is labelled indicative on the chart for that reason. The "Existing Properties" classification is the Land Department's own and is taken as filed: no open primary-versus-secondary key is published, so that flag can carry a developer's delayed-sale registration alongside genuine standing-stock sales. Read it as market context — the level and direction of what actually traded — not as a valuation of any one property. A stratified, mix-adjusted construction is the planned next iteration.
Source And Attribution
Transaction data is sourced from the Dubai Land Department via data.dubai under the Dubai Open Data Licence. The Index methodology, weighting, and presentation are proprietary to Mitchell's Commercial Real Estate.
Disclaimer
The Index is published for general information only. It is not investment advice, financial advice, or a recommendation to transact in any property or security. Mitchell's Commercial Real Estate makes no warranty as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the data, the Index, or any analysis derived from it. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Property markets are illiquid, location-specific, and subject to regulation; readers should consult qualified advisors before making investment decisions. All trademarks and source data are the property of their respective owners.