Dubai, UAE - Buyers spent more than $2.75 billion (AED 10.1 billion) on completed homes in Dubai in October, the highest monthly total for ready residential property since March 2026, according to property consultancy Cavendish Maxwell.
Its figures show 3,702 ready home deals closed during the month, with ready sales up by more than 20% on September.
Cavendish Maxwell said the October numbers point to a recovery in demand for completed homes, even though property sales across the wider market have slowed.
Ready homes made up 36% of all residential sales in the month. Off-plan property still took the larger share of the market, although off-plan sales were 6.4% lower than in September.
Counting both segments, Dubai recorded 10,252 residential transactions in October with a combined value of nearly $6.9 billion (AED 25.35 billion).
The consultancy reported a near 20% rise in Dubai’s ready home sales in July.
Cavendish Maxwell put the softer overall performance down to developers bringing fewer new projects to market. Ronan Arthur, Director and Head of Residential Development at Cavendish Maxwell, said: “While the off-plan sector continues to dominate overall property sales, the last few months have seen a slowdown in new project launches as developer caution deepens, which in turn is impacting overall market performance.”
Arthur also said October brought the ready segment its best monthly sales since regional tensions began in March.
In his view, the drivers of demand in Dubai’s property market have not gone away, but the slower pace of launches, ongoing uncertainty and a cyclical market correction are expected to shape activity in the near term.
“The fundamentals that have always driven Dubai real estate demand are still in place, but launch activity, continued uncertainty and our recently reported cyclical correction will continue to influence the near-term market performance,” he added.
The monthly gain in ready sales came against a weaker year-on-year picture. The number of property transactions in October was down nearly 44% on the same month of 2025, while the value of sales fell 45.5%.
Over the first 10 months of 2026, Dubai’s residential sales came to $87.16 billion (AED 320.1 billion) across 122,452 transactions, a 29% fall in value and a 26% drop in volume compared with the same period last year.
