Dubai Is World’s Leading Luxury Property Market

The city beats London, Paris and New York to emerge on top

Dubai has made history in 2023 by becoming the world’s leading luxury property market, generating close to $850 million (AED3.1 billion) from high-end residential units costing upwards of $10 million in the first six months of the year, and topping London, New York and Paris for the first time, the latest market report revealed.

The market saw 176 high-end property sales that exceeded $10 million during the January-June period, including some of the headline-grabbing deals such as a whopping $111.6 million (AED410 million) deal for a penthouse in the Bulgari Lighthouse residence on Jumeirah Bay Island. The increased global focus on Dubai has also led to a boom in the off-plan sales market, raising its share to about 50 percent of all property sales, in the first half of 2023, the Allsopp & Allsopp H1 2023 market report said.

The surge in demand has also led to residential property sales prices across Dubai seeing a 17 per cent average growth – and far more across the luxury end of the market, said the report by Allsopp & Allsopp, billed as the largest independent real estate agency in the city. “Even my crystal ball did not foresee the sale of an AED410 million penthouse coming, as Dubai became the leading global luxury real estate market in the world for homes sold upwards of $10 million [in H1, 2023],” said Lewis Allsopp, CEO of Allsopp & Allsopp. “We saw an average of four potential buyers competing for each listed property, driving the average sales price up to AED3.6 million – up by close to 10 percent – in the past six months,” he added.

The first six months of 2023 saw the Dubai property market performing at record levels, with sales totalling $48.46 billion (AED178 billion), a sharp rise of 55.4 from H1 2022,  Allsopp & Allsopp said. The report said in H1 2023, Allsopp & Allsopp’s new buyer registrations soared over 84 per cent compared to the same year-ago period.

The agency also saw its platform generating 49 per cent more property viewings than the previous six months, and converting into 28 per cent more sales over the same period. “As a company, we recorded 57 per cent of new buyers taking advantage of mortgage finance, contrary to the widespread narrative that Dubai operates within a cash-buyer bubble,” the report said. “These data points also show a far healthier end-user market than the headlines will have you believe,” it added.

The report also said that the first six months of 2023 saw the Dubai property market performing at record levels, clocking as many as 61,166 total sales transactions, up by 42.3 percent from the previous year. “We continue to see an even split between off-plan (50.1 percent) and secondary (49.9 percent) sales transactions. However, secondary sales contributed a larger slice (60 percent) of the total sales in value terms, helped by prices of readily available properties increasing at an average rate of 17 percent during the first six months of the year,” the report said. Apartment sales accounted for 74 per cent of all Dubai property transactions.