Dubai Office Market: Rents, Prices & Supply
What the Q2 2026 office numbers actually say
Commercial vs Residential: What Changes the Net Return
The office-versus-apartment yield gap is real in the secondary and value-add segment and absent in prime
Grade A Offices: What Supports a Rental Premium
In Q2 2026 Grade B rents grew faster than prime, and the premium for a fitted office ranged from −9% to +70% in buildings measured against themselves.
Ready vs Off-Plan Offices: Income Now or Delivery Risk
Off-plan offices registered at AED 4,349/ft² in 2026 against AED 2,266/ft² for ready ones
Retail Investment: Footfall, Tenant Quality & Lease Risk
Dubai's malls are held, never sold — what trades is strata podium retail.
Dubai Commercial Property Investment Guide
Office rents in Dubai rose 13% last year while home rents fell.
Dubai Office Districts: A Map-Led Investment Guide
Downtown Dubai pays its office owner 4.2–7.0%; Dubai Investments Park pays 9.4–13.3%.
Business Bay Offices: A Project-by-Project Guide
Business Bay took 52% of Dubai's off-plan office money and registers more ready office deals than any other district.
Sheikh Zayed Road Offices: Freehold Since 2025
For decades a foreigner could not own a square foot of Sheikh Zayed Road.
Commercial Property Due Diligence: Before You Reserve
Three parties can stop a Dubai commercial deal, and each holds a document you can get before you reserve
An office in Dubai earns its owner about two percentage points more than an apartment across the city, and office rent has risen every year since 2020 in a market that is 94% let. The problem has always been finding one to buy: the big developers build offices and shops to lease and keep them. That is changing — more than ten commercial projects launched in the past year, against virtually none eighteen months earlier — and the 20 buildings here carry the price of the office or the shop itself.
Office rents are up by double digits year on year, about 94% of Dubai's office space is let, and the pricing power sits with the landlord.
Q2 2026 versus Q2 2025 · year-on-year change
Office rents in Dubai rose 13% in a year. Own an office — your rental income grows with the market. Still deciding — the same office gets more expensive every year you wait.
Source: CBRE, UAE Real Estate Market Review Q2 2026 — Q2 2026 against Q2 2025.
Commercial earns more than housing for a reason, and in Dubai the gap runs to about two percentage points. Which of the two reasons brings you here decides which numbers matter — and the shortlist changes with it.
Offices out-earn apartments by about two points in this city, and the tenant paying for it commits before the building opens.
The two points district by district — where they widen, where they vanish, with the prices, the rents and the twelve checks before a reservation: the yield comparison · the district table · the due-diligence checklist
Office rent has climbed every year since 2020 in a market at 94% occupancy. Owning the address ends the escalator.
Permitted use, the licence address, the visa quota and the fit-out arithmetic are checks 4, 11 and 12; the alcohol rule sits in the retail piece. A conversion to another use we answer per building: the twelve checks · retail and F&B
A commercial project in Dubai is an office or retail building sold unit by unit, the way apartments are — a company buys the floor it works from, or an investor buys an office and lets it. The city barely had such a thing until recently: its office towers went up as a leasing business, held by the developers and landlords who built them. That has changed, and the new towers show it — of the 8 million ft² of office space due in Dubai by 2028, much is being sold off-plan before it is built. These 20 buildings are the market as it stands, Business Bay to Dubailand, from an office under AED 700K to a whole floor.
No commercial project matches that.
Binghatti · Al Jaddaf Waterfront
Imtiaz Developments · Sheikh Zayed Road
IRTH · Business Bay
OMNIYAT · Business Bay
Samana Developers · Downtown Jebel Ali
Centurion Properties · Business Bay
AVENEW Development · Motor City
IRTH Group · Marasi Bay, Business Bay
Imtiaz Developments · Meydan Horizon
Imtiaz Developments · Dubai Land Residence Complex, Dubailand
Danube Properties · Dubai Sports City
Tomorrow World · International City 2
DAMAC Properties · DAMAC Hills, Dubailand
Mira Developments · Al Furjan
AHS Properties · Sheikh Zayed Road
Omniyat · Business Bay
Ellington Properties · Meydan Horizon
Mr. Eight Development · Dubai Land Residence Complex
Fakhruddin Properties · Dubai Land Residence Complex
Mira Developments · Al Furjan
Business Bay is the centre of gravity of this market — it took 52% of the money in Dubai's off-plan office segment, and 5 of the 20 buildings here stand in it. Sheikh Zayed Road and Al Jaddaf are the freehold corridor: 457 plots opened to buyers of every nationality in January 2025. The value end runs further out, to Dubai Sports City and International City, where an office starts under AED 1M. Every building in this section is here — on the map and in the list.
Loading the Dubai commercial map… Every building is in the list too, with its price and a link to its page.
Exact plot being confirmed — the location is described on the project page. Open project
Exact plot being confirmed — the location is described on the project page. Open project
Exact plot being confirmed — the location is described on the project page. Open project
Exact plot being confirmed — the location is described on the project page. Open project
Exact plot being confirmed — the location is described on the project page. Open project
Exact plot being confirmed — the location is described on the project page. Open project
Exact plot being confirmed — the location is described on the project page. Open project
Exact plot being confirmed — the location is described on the project page. Open project
Exact plot being confirmed — the location is described on the project page. Open project
Exact plot being confirmed — the location is described on the project page. Open project
Exact plot being confirmed — the location is described on the project page. Open project
Exact plot being confirmed — the location is described on the project page. Open project
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Where to buy, what it really costs, and what to check before you pay anything. Twenty-seven districts with their office asking prices, their asking rents and the gross yield each pair implies — from 4.2–7.0% in Downtown to 9.4–13.3% in Dubai Investments Park — plus Business Bay and Sheikh Zayed Road building by building. Then what the price leaves out: 5% VAT, 4% to the Land Department, the service charge and the chiller — and twelve checks before you reserve.
Office rents in Dubai rose 13% last year while home rents fell. Here is where that gap becomes a yield you can bank, which districts will actually sell you an office, what the purchase costs beyond the price, and the twenty buildings on the market today.
Read guide
Downtown Dubai pays its office owner 4.2–7.0%; Dubai Investments Park pays 9.4–13.3%. Here are 27 districts with what an office costs, what it lets for and what it yields — and the six that will not sell you one at any price.
Read guide
Business Bay took 52% of Dubai's off-plan office money and registers more ready office deals than any other district. Here is what an office costs, the two price worlds inside one postcode — mainstream beats an apartment, trophy loses to it — and the five on sale.
Read guide
For decades a foreigner could not own a square foot of Sheikh Zayed Road. In January 2025 Dubai Land Department moved 457 plots to freehold for all nationalities — 128 on the road, 329 in Al Jaddaf. Which plots those are, what an office here costs and pays, and why the road's two ends sit thirty kilometres apart.
Read guide
Three parties can stop a Dubai commercial deal, and each holds a document you can get before you reserve: the tax authority wants its 5% before the title moves, the building holds a lien for the last owner's arrears, and the sitting tenant has twelve months' notice. Twelve checks, and what they found on twenty buildings.
Read guideOffice rents rose 13% over the year to Q2 2026 while residential rents fell 2.6%, Grade B outgrew prime, an off-plan office registered at nearly double the price per foot of a finished one, and no unit in Dubai's malls is for sale at any price. Five pieces take those apart — the yield gap, the Grade A premium, ready against off-plan, and what strata retail really is.
What the Q2 2026 office numbers actually say — rents up 13% while residential rents fell, vacancy at 6.1%, and a supply pipeline whose published forecasts disagree by a factor of six. Every figure with its source and its period.
Read
The office-versus-apartment yield gap is real in the secondary and value-add segment and absent in prime — and VAT, service charge, corporate tax and liquidity all behave differently on a commercial purchase. The comparison, mechanic by mechanic.
Read
In Q2 2026 Grade B rents grew faster than prime, and the premium for a fitted office ranged from −9% to +70% in buildings measured against themselves. What a Grade A label does and does not buy, with the pairs that prove it.
Read
Off-plan offices registered at AED 4,349/ft² in 2026 against AED 2,266/ft² for ready ones — nearly double, for a building that does not exist yet. Why buyers pay it, what it costs beyond the price, and how to judge a building two years before the keys.
Read
Dubai's malls are held, never sold — what trades is strata podium retail. Buying it means buying tenant-mix risk, a service-charge lien and, for F&B, a licence that attaches to the operator and the address, not to the premises.
ReadWhether a foreigner can own an office at all, what a purchase costs on top of the price, who pays the 5% VAT, what an office yields against an apartment, and whether any of it brings a visa — the questions that come before a reservation. Each is answered short here, and all 25 in full on the FAQ page.
Yes, wherever the land is freehold — in Dubai freehold is a property of the land, not of the unit's use, so an office or a retail unit inside a freehold zone is ownable by a foreigner on the same footing as an apartment. In January 2025 Dubai Land Department moved 457 plots to freehold for all nationalities: 128 along Sheikh Zayed Road from the Trade Centre Roundabout to the Water Canal, and 329 in Al Jaddaf. Tenure comes in three forms for foreign buyers per u.ae — freehold, usufruct and leasehold up to 99 years — and the only document that settles it for a specific unit is the title deed, where it appears as Property Type / Tenure — so tenure is read off the deed, per unit, before money moves. Ask us for it on any unit you are serious about. DIFC is a separate legal system with its own Registrar under DIFC Law No. 10 of 2018.
Full answer: Sheikh Zayed Road Offices — §1, what «freehold» actually attaches to
What trades is strata retail — the ground floors and podiums of second-tier towers — and the volume is real: AED 1.15bn across 437 retail sale transactions in Q3 2025 alone (CRC Property). The majors work on the opposite model, and price has nothing to do with it: Emaar's own Integrated Annual Report 2024 puts Emaar Malls at over 10.5 million ft² of GLA, 3,500+ retail units and AED 5.1bn of segment revenue — an asset producing that on recurring rent is the business itself, and selling units away would hand away control of tenant mix, rent and valuation with it. Dubai Retail consolidated 40+ assets and over 13 million ft² of GLA on the same model in September 2025.
Full answer: Retail Investment — §1, what you can actually buy
DLD registration is 2% from the seller and 2% from the buyer, plus AED 250 for the title deed, AED 225 for the unified map, AED 10 knowledge and AED 10 innovation, plus a trustee fee of AED 4,000 + VAT on deals from AED 500,000 (DLD's own service pages, checked 10 August 2026). The convention that the buyer pays all 4% is market practice, not the tariff — in a commercial deal the seller's 2% is genuinely negotiable, and asking for it is normal. Then 5% VAT, broker commission of 2% plus VAT on the commission (contractual — no regulation sets it), a developer NOC on a resale at roughly AED 500–5,000+, and, if financed, mortgage registration at 0.25% of the loan plus AED 250. Annually: the service charge on the registered area, the chiller capacity charge whether the unit is let or not, and DEWA — there is no property tax and no capital-gains tax in the UAE.
Full answer: Commercial Property Due Diligence — §3, the money that is not the price
Yes — 5%, on sale and on lease alike (FTA VAT Real Estate Guide VATGRE1 §6.2), where residential resale is exempt and a first residential supply within three years is zero-rated. On a secondary commercial sale the Special Payment Mechanism applies (VATGRE1 §6.4): the buyer pays the VAT directly to the FTA before re-registration, receives a Payment Transaction Number and must produce it at the Land Department — in the guide's own words, «without this evidence that the VAT on the purchase has been paid, the purchase of the property cannot proceed». So the 5% falls due before the transfer, and on an instalment plan it accrues on each payment. The most common error in this market is «commercial VAT is reverse-charged, so there is nothing to pay» — there is; and a tenanted unit sold to a taxable person may qualify as a transfer of a going concern, which is worth structuring with a tax adviser in advance.
Full answer: Commercial vs Residential — §3, VAT and the number that gates the transfer
In one part of the office market, by up to three points; in another they yield less than an average apartment. The residential base is about 6.9% gross across apartments and villas (Engel & Völkers Middle East, early 2026), with apartments alone at 7.15% (Property Monitor, April 2026). On the office side — and every office yield in circulation is a broker estimate, since no institutional house publishes a Dubai office cap rate — Chestertons (February 2026) put DIFC Grade A at 6.5–7.5%, Business Bay at 7–9%, and JLT and Al Quoz at up to 10%. So the trophy office yields less than the average apartment, Business Bay modestly more, and the secondary and value-add segment up to three points more. One top-down figure holds up, and only because it divides a reported rent by a registered price: AED 211/ft²/year (Cushman & Wakefield Core, Q1 2026) over the DLD ready-office average of AED 2,266/ft² gives 9.3% gross at city level — about two points, concentrated at the cheap end.
Full answer: Dubai Commercial Property Investment Guide — §3, the yield picture
Twelve things, in the order they matter: the title deed read in full; the service-charge rate and the arrears; the chiller; permitted use; VAT and the Payment Transaction Number; the lease you are inheriting; the price basis; the area basis; registration and escrow; handover terms plus evidence that anything is being built; the building's physics against your actual scenario; and the parking the deed records, which the building's own description does not always match. Two of them can stop a transfer outright — the unpaid service charges that are a lien on the unit under Law 6/2019 Art. 32, and the VAT evidence required by VATGRE1 §6.4. Each check has a place it is verifiable: the deed, the Mollak Service Charge Index, the cooling provider's statement, the Oqood entry, the FTA portal. Ask us and we run all twelve against those sources for the specific unit.
Full answer: Commercial Property Due Diligence — §1, the twelve checks
Yes at AED 2 million, on the wording of the rule. The u.ae Golden Visa page, updated 28 July 2026, sets the real-estate investor route at a minimum capital of AED 2 million and speaks of «property ownership» — a use-neutral term that covers an office or a shop as readily as an apartment. The term published for that route is 5 years on u.ae and 10 years in DLD's communications on the same threshold, so have GDRFA or ICP confirm the one that applies to your own case before you reserve. For a company buying its own premises the better-evidenced route is visa capacity through the office itself — staff visas against the space you hold — settled in the licensing system at the time of application.
Full answer: Sheikh Zayed Road Offices — §6, the visa question
