A breather more than correction: How Dubai’s red-hot real estate market stood up to missiles and drones
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.“We are thinking of moving to Dubai. Know any good brokers?” That question used to pop up regularly in 2025 on cross-Arabian Sea phone calls to residents of the city-state from India.
The diligent among them had lists of brokers, property prices by neighbourhood, school admission timelines and short-term rental benchmarks—ready to forward when this question arose.At the start of this year, Dubai’s real estate market was running at full throttle—record transactions, rising prices and a skyline that seemed to grow shinier by the week.The pitch was as much emotional as financial. In a world of rising global trade volatility, Dubai—one of the seven emirates in the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—was sold by brokers and developers as certainty; a place where families felt safe and buying a home felt less like a risk than a delayed decision.Dubai’s real estate boom stood out in comparable global markets.
Singapore’s private residential market rose 3.3% in 2025, according to its Urban Redevelopment Authority, after a 3.9% rise in 2024. Hong Kong moved in the opposite direction: Reuters, citing Hong Kong Rating and Valuation Department data, reported that home prices shrank nearly 30% from their 2021 peak before stabilizing in 2025.While the boom in UAE real estate was centred in Dubai, other emirates did well, too.
Abu Dhabi, the UAE capital, also had a record year in 2025, with the Abu Dhabi Real Estate Centre reporting AED 142 billion across 42,814 deals, up 48% in value and 52% in volume from 2024. Ras Al Khaimah, a smaller market increasingly shaped by waterfront, branded and tourism-linked projects, recorded AED 12.4 billion in residential sales across 6,600 transactions in 2025, according to
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