How the data is sourced, calculated, and interpreted. Last updated: March 17, 2026.
All rental and sales transaction data is sourced from ReidIN, a licensed DLD (Dubai Land Department) data portal. ReidIN provides access to the full official DLD register of rental contracts and property sales transactions.
| Data type | Source | Coverage |
|---|---|---|
| Rental contracts | ReidIN — DLD rental register | Jan 1 – Mar 14, 2026 (~146,000 rows) |
| Ready sales | ReidIN — DLD sales register | Jan 1 – Mar 15, 2026 (~12,000 rows) |
Only residential property transactions are included. Off-plan sales are excluded from conflict-period analysis (see Section 5).
Rental contracts are filtered to Rent Type = 'New' or Rent Type = 'Renewed' only. One row in each export contains filter metadata as the Rent Type value — this is excluded by filtering to exact values rather than dropping nulls.
The pre-conflict baseline is January 6 – February 27, 2026 (53 days).
The first week of January is anomalously low due to the New Year holiday lag — residents who signed agreements in late December often register them in the first days of January, creating an artificial trough. Including this period in the baseline would artificially depress the pre-conflict average and overstate the conflict impact.
January 6 was selected as the first full trading week. The baseline ends February 27 (the day before the conflict started on February 28).
Rental contract volumes are expressed as daily averages within each window:
Using daily averages (rather than raw totals) is essential because the baseline period (53 days) and the growing post-conflict window have different lengths. Comparing raw totals would produce artificially large declines as the ratio of baseline-to-post days widens.
DLD registers ready sales transactions in weekday batches. The daily pattern is stark: weekend days (Friday and Saturday in UAE context, plus Sunday) show near-zero registration volumes, while weekday volumes spike accordingly. The daily breakdown from the post-conflict period illustrates this clearly:
| Day of week | Typical volume |
|---|---|
| Saturday / Sunday | 1–22 transactions |
| Monday–Friday | 83–183 transactions |
Because the post-conflict period began on Saturday February 28, the first two days contributed only 26 transactions combined — heavily distorting a simple daily average calculation.
The correct approach is weekly averages on complete weeks only:
The simpler daily average approach produces −52.1%, which overstates the decline due to the weekend-heavy composition of the first post-conflict days. The weekly average is the more defensible figure.
Off-plan transactions are excluded from all conflict-period analysis on this dashboard.
Off-plan transactions have a DLD registration lag of 30–90 days from the point of agreement. A transaction agreed in October 2025 may appear in the DLD register in January 2026. A transaction agreed post-conflict in March 2026 will not appear in DLD data until April–June 2026 at the earliest.
This means: any off-plan data visible in the conflict window was agreed weeks or months before the conflict started. Including it would create a false baseline and make the conflict impact appear smaller or larger than it actually is.
Both rental prices and sales prices per sqft show stable or slightly rising medians in the post-conflict period. This is counterintuitive given the volume collapse. The explanation is the selection effect.
When demand contracts, not all demand contracts equally. The first movers to pause are marginal, budget-sensitive participants — renters who were still deciding between communities and were not committed, buyers who were circling without urgency. These are typically the lowest-price transactions in the distribution.
The transactions that continue to complete are from more committed, above-market participants: expats whose contracts require them to move, buyers with pre-approved mortgages closing on agreed deals, investors executing pre-planned allocations.
When the bottom of the distribution drops out, the median rises mechanically — not because prices went up, but because the cheapest transactions stopped happening.
The lag between a volume shock and a price correction is typically 3–6 months in the Dubai rental market and 4–8 weeks for seller repricing in the sales market (the time it takes for landlords and sellers to acknowledge that the market has changed).
At 15 days post-conflict, no price correction is expected. If volumes remain compressed through April–May, median rental prices will begin drifting downward as the pool of committed signings is exhausted and marginal landlords begin competing on price.
The DLD register reflects completed registrations, not agreements. A buyer who decides to purchase today will not appear in the DLD data for several weeks, depending on transaction type:
| Transaction type | Typical DLD registration lag | First post-conflict decisions visible |
|---|---|---|
| Cash sale | ~30–45 days | Late March 2026 |
| Single-side mortgage (buyer or seller financed) | ~45–60 days | Mid-April 2026 |
| Double-side mortgage (both parties financed) | ~60–75 days | Late April 2026 |
| Off-plan developer registration | 30–90 days (batch) | Excluded from analysis |
Implication: the sales volume figures in the early post-conflict period (February 28 – March 15) largely reflect transactions agreed before the conflict. The first genuinely post-conflict buyer decisions will appear in the data from late March onwards. The April dataset will provide the first clean read.
The community tracker uses daily averages per community, not raw totals. The same logic applies as for the overall volume calculation: the baseline is 53 days and the post-conflict window is growing, so raw totals are not comparable.
Communities with fewer than 5 contracts per day in the pre-conflict period produce highly volatile % change figures. These are flagged in the dashboard — the directional trend is meaningful but the exact % is not.
| Segment | Communities |
|---|---|
| Prime Apartments | Downtown Dubai, Dubai Marina, Palm Jumeirah, Business Bay, Dubai Creek Harbour, JBR |
| Mid-Tier Apartments | JVC, JVT, Al Furjan, Dubai Sports City, Dubai Silicon Oasis, Arjan |
| Value | International City, Discovery Gardens, Town Square, Damac Hills 2, Dubai South, Liwan |
| Villas | Arabian Ranches, Jumeirah Golf Estates, Tilal Al Ghaf, Damac Hills, The Springs, Dubai Hills Estate, Emaar South |
Majan is excluded from the community tracker. It shows 234 transactions over 6 days in the post-conflict window — a known anomalous bulk registration event. Including it would distort the value segment average.
The full 251-community table in the dashboard shows the complete DLD register and is not filtered by segment.
Ramadan 2026 began February 18 — ten days before the conflict started on February 28. This creates an analytical challenge: the post-conflict period and the Ramadan period overlap almost entirely.
Ramadan typically suppresses real estate transaction volumes in Dubai, as decision-making slows and move activity reduces during fasting hours. The pre-conflict baseline (Jan 6 – Feb 27) captures the first 10 days of Ramadan (Feb 18–27). The post-conflict period (Feb 28 onwards) is entirely within Ramadan.
This means the observed volume decline is likely a combination of two effects: conflict-driven caution and Ramadan seasonality. It is not possible to cleanly separate the two with this dataset.
Historically, the first two weeks of post-Ramadan activity see a rebound in transaction volumes as delayed decisions complete. If volumes do not rebound by mid-April, the conflict effect is clearly dominant.