Market direction
The index is a level against a fixed base. Reading it back across the quarters tells you whether commercial prices are climbing, flattening or giving ground, and how much of any move happened recently rather than years ago.
Investor Tools
Market Index & PSF
Two readings of the registered record, published in full: how commercial prices for existing offices and shops have moved quarter by quarter since 2009, and where the median rate per square foot sits today in the Dubai areas with the deepest registered sales evidence behind them.
Market data
Index
Rate panel · register read to 9 October 2026
The index panel runs on the register’s own quarters and states its latest complete quarter in the basis line under the chart. The two dates are different measurements of the same register and are never combined into one.
Market Intelligence
Market Index & PSF
Two readings from the Dubai Land Department register: the commercial price index over time, and median price per square foot across the areas with the deepest transaction samples.
Commercial Price Index Existing offices & shops · quarterly · 2022 = 100
ScopeOffices and shops only
The reading itself — with its segment, its window and its date — is published on the Commercial Price Index, monthly and by segment. The line here is the shape of it, to Q3 26.
Source: Dubai Land Department sale transactions — existing-property offices and shops, quarterly trimmed median AED per sq ft indexed to the 2022 calendar-year average. Latest complete quarter Q3 26; the part-quarter in progress is excluded.
Median PSF by Area AED / sq ft · median, 12m to Oct 2026
ScopeAll property types and both registration types — 68.9% off-plan
Source: Dubai Land Department (DLD) transaction register, via Mitchell's DLD pipeline — median AED per sq ft on registered sales in the 12 months to 9 October 2026, pooling off-plan and existing-property sales. Showing the 6 areas with the deepest transaction samples in that window; an area needs at least 300 qualifying sales to be published.
Both panels are built from registered DLD transactions, not asking prices, and neither is mix-adjusted: the index is a quarterly trimmed median of existing-property office and shop sales, the PSF panel a rolling 12-month median across all property types in each area. Directional market context — not a valuation of any specific asset.
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Why we publish it
Registered prices
Most of what circulates about Dubai pricing is an asking price, a press release, or an average that quietly blends a tower’s off-plan launch with the standing stock in the block next door. This page starts somewhere else.
Registered sale prices are facts of record. They are filed after the deal has completed, they carry the size the unit was transferred at, and nobody has an incentive to shade them upward before a launch or downward before a negotiation. An asking price tells you what a seller hopes for. A registered price tells you what a buyer agreed to. Only one of those two is evidence.
We publish two readings because one is a direction and the other is a level. The index answers how commercial prices have moved, quarter by quarter, measured against a fixed base year. The median-per-square-foot panel answers where prices sit right now, area by area, in the parts of Dubai where the register holds enough registered sales for a median to mean anything at all.
The index is deliberately built on existing properties only — the offices and shops the register itself classifies as standing stock — and leaves off-plan launch registrations out of the calculation entirely. That is not a stylistic preference. Blended commercial indices printed apparent all-time highs in early 2026 because a wave of off-plan pre-registrations, priced at several times the rate the standing stock was actually trading at, landed in the same series and dragged the median with them. Strip those registrations out and the line describes the market a buyer of an existing office is standing in today.
Publishing it is a discipline on us as much as a service to you. Every figure on this page is reproducible from the same public register you can query yourself, each panel states its own basis directly under the chart rather than in a footnote nobody reads, and where a series holds nothing the panel says so instead of drawing a plausible-looking line through empty space. That is the whole standard: show the working, or do not show the number.
What it is for
Uses
None of them need a spreadsheet, a subscription, or a conversation with us first.
Quoted rates
Set the AED per square foot you have been quoted against the registered median for that area. A number well outside it may still be sound. It is a question worth asking before you spend anything else on the deal.
Performance since purchase
Find the quarter you bought in, then read forward. The index will not value your unit and does not try to. It tells you what the segment around your unit has done in the meantime, which is where any honest conversation about price begins.
Rates by area
The rate panel ranks the areas with the deepest registered sales evidence by their median AED per square foot, so the spread between the top and the bottom of that group is a single glance rather than an afternoon of spreadsheet work.
Brochure claims
Brochures and investment decks quote averages, usually without stating a basis. This page lets you check the claimed direction of travel against transactions that were filed rather than forecast, and to see exactly which transactions were counted.
Sale timing
Owners weighing a sale can see whether the quarter they would be pricing into sits above or below the ones before it, and whether a recent run is a firm trend or two thin readings that have not settled yet.
Who benefits
Audience
The Dubai Land Department register is public, but it is not readable. These two panels are the two questions most people actually need answered out of it.
Investors and buyers
You are choosing between areas and assets with a finite amount of capital. The index gives you the trend behind the commercial segment; the rate panel gives you the level to price against. Together they turn a long shortlist into a comparison you can defend to a partner or a committee.
Owners and sellers
Before you set an asking price or accept an offer, the record shows what the segment has done since you bought and what has been registering recently in the areas carrying the most evidence. It is the difference between a considered price and a hopeful one.
Occupiers weighing buy against lease
If owning your own premises is on the table, the capital half of that decision starts with what commercial space genuinely costs per square foot in the districts you could realistically operate from, and whether that cost is rising or steady.
Lenders, valuers and accountants
A published median that names its filter, its window and its base year is a sanity check on a valuation that arrives with none of those things. Everything here is reproducible from the public register, which is what makes it usable as a cross-reference.
Developers and agents
The existing-property series is the benchmark any new launch is implicitly priced against. Knowing what standing stock registers at is the first step to knowing whether a launch premium is defensible or merely asserted with confidence.
Anyone doing their own diligence
Analysts, family offices, journalists and first-time buyers all arrive at the same question: what does the record say? This page is that answer, in public, with no login, no paywall and no sales call standing in between.
How to use it
Reading the results
Index numbers are easy to quote and easy to misquote. Six notes that keep the reading straight.
- 01
Index points
The base is the segment’s own 2022 calendar-year average, set to 100. A reading above it means the trimmed median rate per square foot is that much higher than the base year. It is an index point, not an AED figure for any particular unit.
- 02
The two panels
The index covers offices and shops the register classes as existing properties. The rate panel covers every property type registered in an area, residential included. They answer different questions on purpose, and averaging them would answer neither.
- 03
Medians
Both panels publish medians rather than averages, and the index trims the extreme one per cent at each end of every quarter before taking one. The trim stops a single exceptional floor-plate sale from moving an entire quarter on its own.
- 04
The quarter in progress
We leave the part-quarter in progress out of the plotted series. A thin, incomplete quarter plots as a spike and reads as news, when it is only a small sample that has not finished arriving at the register yet.
- 05
Sample depth
The areas in the rate panel are there because the register holds the deepest samples for them in the window. Depth is what makes a median worth quoting; a median of nine sales is an anecdote with a decimal point.
- 06
Interpretation
Direction and level narrow a decision; they do not make one. What sits behind a rate — the building, the floor, the lease in place, the service charge, the exit — is the conversation that follows, and it is the one we are here for.
Provenance and limits
Data source and limits
Every filter, window and base year behind the two panels, and the five things they are not.
The specificationOne register, two measurements — and they do not count the same thing.
Common to both panels
- Source
- Dubai Land Department transaction register
- Excluded
- Asking prices, listings, estimates, interpolated points
Commercial Price Index
ScopeOffices and shops only
- Index scope
- Offices and shops registered as existing properties, unit sales
- Index measure
- Quarterly median AED per sq ft, after a 1% / 99% trim
- Index base
- The segment’s own 2022 calendar-year average = 100
- Index history
- The quarterly view, from Q1 2009; the part-quarter in progress is excluded. The monthly view, from January 2009, is on the commercial price index
Median PSF by Area
ScopeAll property types and both registration types — 68.9% off-plan
- Rate scope
- Registered sales, all property types, pooling off-plan launch registrations (68.9%) with sales of existing property (31.1%)
- Rate window
- A rolling twelve months to 9 October 2026
- Rate outliers
- Sales outside AED 100–20,000 per sq ft are dropped
- Areas shown
- Those with the deepest transaction samples in the window; an area needs at least 300 qualifying sales to be published at all
The limitsWhat these two readings cannot do, and which of them each caveat bites on.
- Both panels
Mix adjustment
A quarter in which more large, prime floor-plates happened to register will read higher than one in which more small secondary units did, even if nothing about the underlying market changed. The trim removes the extremes; it does not correct the mix. A stratified version — by area, sub-type and size band — is the direction of travel, and until it lands the series is best read as a trend rather than a measurement.
- Commercial Price Index
Class boundary
“Existing properties” is a flag the Dubai Land Department applies at registration, and we take it as filed rather than reclassifying anything ourselves. It is the cleanest separation available between standing stock and launch activity, and it is not a perfect one.
- Median PSF by Area
Area labels
The register names areas by cadastral sector; the panel shows the names the market uses. That mapping is published alongside the data rather than applied silently, so you can see where a name has been changed and why.
- Both panels
As-of dates
They are regenerated when the register is re-read and built into the page, which is why each panel prints its own as-of date. Quote that date if you are putting a number in front of anybody else.
- Both panels
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, and no chart on this page can be.
More investor tools
The rest of the market data
4 more readings of the Dubai Land Department record — index series, and the evidence area by area.
