The Dubai secondary market in 2025: 66 451 transactions and AED 86bn of resale profit
Owners of off-plan property are regularly told the resale market has stalled. The figures say otherwise: about 180 transactions a day including weekends. What the profit number does and does not mean.
Owners of property under construction hear regularly that the Dubai resale market has stopped. That claim can only be tested with numbers, and the numbers exist.
2025 in the secondary market
- 66 451 transactions over the year.
- AED 238bn of total sales volume.
- AED 1 490 per square foot average price.
- AED 86bn of seller profit on resale — roughly $23bn.
Sixty-six thousand transactions is about 180 a day, weekends included. A conversation about a market that does not function does not survive that volume.
What the profit figure is
AED 86bn is the difference between purchase price and sale price across every resold property in the year. Its nature matters: it is a market aggregate, not the average result of an individual seller. Inside the same dataset sit transactions closed at a loss — they are simply outweighed by profitable ones.
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Anyone quoting that number as evidence that "resale in Dubai returns 86 billion" is misreading it. What it establishes is that the market as a whole was in profit, which is a different and weaker claim than that any given seller was.
Reading the average price
An average of AED 1 490 per foot sits below the headline figures quoted for prime districts, and that is expected: the secondary market is dominated by mid-market stock in dense districts, not by waterfront apartments. It is the average of what actually changes hands, which is a more honest picture of the market than the average of what is advertised.
What an owner should take from it
The resale market works, at scale, every day. What it does not do is absorb an overpriced property, in 2025 or in any other year. The transaction count says a buyer exists; the price you achieve is still set by comparables, condition and how the property is presented.
For an off-plan owner planning to exit before handover, the relevant comparison is not this total but the depth of the market in your specific building — how many units in it traded last year, and at what. That number is available, and it is far more useful than the emirate-wide aggregate.
Video on this topic
The same subject on the English channel — each clip has a written version of its own.
36:55The Biltmore Residences Dubai: brand history, the numbers, and what you can actually earn14 July 2023
19:59Imperial Avenue: a profitable resale in Downtown Dubai13 January 2024
30:56Resale in Peninsula: how to buy the best apartment in central Dubai second-hand16 October 2023
1:30An under-market two-bedroom in Peninsula: what a real discount looks like11 January 2024
In the news
Other write-ups on the site about the same thing.
Scope Investment: a 2022 tower, and the first wave of resales
A Dubai Marina tower completed a few years ago. Buildings at this age go through a predictable event that shapes their prices — and it is a buying opportunity if you can see it.
Supply came back, demand did not: what two months of Dubai listing data showed
Listing-portal data has one advantage over the transaction register: no registration lag. A cross-section of the secondary market two months into an unstable period.
Gulf General Investments Company: a first-generation Marina tower, twenty years on
A diversified investment group whose Dubai Marina tower completed in 2006. What the district’s earliest buildings offer, and the systems that come due at that age.
Cayan Group: owning a unit in a landmark building
The developer of one of Dubai Marina’s best-known towers. What a landmark address does for resale and rent — and the specific costs an unusual building carries.
Parshwa Holdings Ltd and Zabeel Investments: buying from a joint venture
A Palm Jumeirah building delivered by two companies together. Joint ventures are common in Dubai development and they change one thing that matters: who exactly owes you what.
The Springs: what comes due in a villa community at twenty years
One of Dubai’s first villa communities, traded entirely second-hand. The list of works is predictable — and no service charge is saving up for it.