Business Bay Offices: A Project-by-Project Guide

Three structural facts, and they reinforce each other. Freehold at scale: Business Bay holds roughly 64 million ft² of freehold land, with ownership open to all nationalities — the reason a strata office market could form here at all while DIFC, Media City and Internet City could not. Strata supply: the mid-market residential machine builds towers here and carves the podium and office floors into individually titled units, which is what creates stock a private buyer can actually own. Pipeline: Knight Frank's 2026 forecast puts 24.2M ft² of office space across 2026–2030, concentrated in Business Bay, Meydan City, JLT and DIFC.

One number cuts against all of that. Off-plan office sales in H1 2026 reached AED 13.1bn across 1,668 units — more than the previous seven years combined — but five projects accounted for 71.7% of that value and 51.3% of the deals (analysis of DLD data by Al Masdar Al Aqaari, 2 July 2026). Two of those five, Lumena and Lumena Alta, are Business Bay towers by one developer. The district's volume is real; it is not broad.

Every office listing in the district on 10 August 2026 puts the mainstream asking range at AED 1,850–2,935/ft² with asking rents of 145–263 AED/ft²/year, implying a gross band of 6.1–11.2% on asking-over-asking arithmetic. The broker estimate from a named research note is 7–9% gross (Chestertons, February 2026). Both describe the mainstream. Neither describes the top of the market.

The trophy towers are a different asset. Business Bay's landmark offices ask 5,500–7,350 AED/ft², which takes the gross yield down to 4–5% — below the average Dubai apartment. Which is the thing to hold on to here: inside one postcode the yield runs from better-than-an-apartment to worse-than-one, decided entirely by which tower you pick.

And the cheapest units here are the most expensive per foot. The sub-AED-1M offices in Business Bay are micro-lots in older towers — 221–230 ft² asking 2,805–2,935/ft², 282–440 ft² asking 2,159–2,725/ft². You are paying for the address and for the divisibility, not for area. They let well, though: in one of those towers a fully furnished 440 ft² unit asks 250 AED/ft²/year against an unfurnished 407 ft² unit in the same building at 164 — a 52% premium on the rate, which is one of the few places in Dubai where the fitted premium is real. The full set of seven same-building pairs, including the three where the premium is zero or negative, is in Grade A Offices: What Supports a Rental Premium.

Two running costs come with the office, and neither shows up in the headline price. Service charge: 15–20 AED/ft²/year for Business Bay — and that is a Mollak residential proxy, because no public service-charge index exists for offices; the rate for a specific building is public in Mollak, per project. Fit-out: for Business Bay specifically, 214–284 AED/ft² light, 284–374 standard, 374–524 premium (TR Design Build, updated July 2026), with a 40–60% uplift on a basic fit-out when starting from shell & core. Lumena and Haus of Tenet are sold shell & core, so for them that uplift is part of the entry price, not an option; HQ by Rove is the district's exception, selling fitted and furnished.

You will hear «Grade A» in every pitch in this district, and the last twelve months argue with it. JLL, Q2 2026, year on year: Grade A +26.2%, Grade B +31.5%, prime +13.6%. The best space grew least. Vacancy says the same thing from the other direction: citywide 6.1%, Grade B 8.0% (from 10.9% a year earlier), Grade C 10.9% (from 12.7%) — the improvement is sharpest below the top, because a tenant who cannot find or afford prime does not stop needing an office.

So a «Grade A» label in a brochure is a description of specification, not a certificate, and on its own it predicts nothing about rental growth — the last twelve months are direct evidence against that reading. What does support a premium in this market, per the same reports, is that quality space gets committed before it opens: DIFC Square was substantially pre-let before construction finished, and Savills states plainly that most future Grade A supply will be pre-leased or absorbed by existing demand. The Grade A analysis piece takes the whole question apart, including the four questions that settle a premium claim.

IRTH, Business Bay, from AED 3.2M, handover Q2 2028, 10/40/50, shell & core, 100% freehold for foreign buyers. Fifteen floors, roughly 87 office clusters configurable to as many as 225 units, in three lines with their own published size ranges: Classic 596–3,190 ft², Terrace 796–2,702 ft², Garden 1,111–3,690 ft². The AED 3.2M entry is quoted against the 596 ft² Classic suite.

Its entry price is the one in this district that every channel agrees on: identical across IRTH's own material and six independent channels in June 2026. The size ranges are published per line, not as one building-wide span, which is the difference between a quoted entry size and a real one. And the product matches the tenant the leasing data actually describes: 66% of Dubai office leases in Q2 2026 were for space under 500 ft² and roughly 97% of transactions were under 3,000 ft² (Savills and ZāZen on DLD data). A building whose entry unit is 596 ft² is built for that market; a building whose entry unit is a whole floor is in a different business.

Three limits. IRTH publishes no per-typology price list, so the basis is broker asking and only the single entry figure is public, which means no AED/ft² can be worked out for the building. The 8–10% return in the marketing is a forecast, not a guarantee. And no dated site-progress report exists, so this is off-plan, not under construction.

Omniyat, Business Bay, resale from AED 25.1M, handover Q4 2029, 50/50, shell & core. A 47-level building with 561,100 ft² of offices and 25,618 ft² of retail, split into 99 offices and 18 half-floors. Omniyat is the single tier-one developer in Dubai that genuinely sells commercial space off-plan — the other majors build commercial stock to lease — and Lumena is its flagship in this district.

Omniyat's launch price of AED 19M is still printed on lumena.omniyat.com directly above the words «officially sold out». Both are true; neither is a price you can pay. The transactable entry is the resale floor: the cheapest of twelve live listings on Property Finder on 13 August 2026, at AED 25,114,369, in a range running to AED 40.4M. Cross-read against Cushman & Wakefield's records of AED 30.9M for 4,247 ft² and AED 43.3M for 7,329 ft², the resale market here is internally consistent — and it runs roughly a third above the launch figure that third-party sites still quote. If a listing shows you AED 19M, you are looking at a museum piece.

Two things to settle before you price a Lumena deal. There is no full-floor price: the 16,649 ft² plate is a plan figure off Omniyat's own sheet, and none of the twelve resale listings is a full floor. And no AED/ft² exists for the entry lot, because the 25.1M belongs to a specific listing whose area is unpublished, while the building's 5,636 ft² average office size is a division of totals — price and area from different lots, so the rate cannot be derived.

Three more Business Bay towers can be priced today. HQ by Rove (IRTH, Marasi Bay) sells fitted, furnished and serviced offices in seven types from Studio to Penthouse Loft, from AED 2.92M — the lowest sale the Land Department has recorded there, as of 26 September 2026, in a recorded range to AED 12.34M — with the broker channel asking from AED 3,504,009 for the same product. Burj Capital (Centurion) is 238 offices of 243 units on 10,000 ft² plates, shell & core from AED 2.58M on the developer feed brokers work from, September 2026, with the Land Department's most recent recorded sale at AED 3.1M. LUMENA ALTA (Omniyat) is 132 offices from 4,502 ft² across 73 levels, sold by lift bank, from AED 12.7M on the same DLD basis, in a recorded range to AED 41.8M. Two things circulating about them are wrong: Burj Capital's developer is Centurion Properties alone — OCTA is its sales and marketing agency, not a co-developer — and the «roughly 50% complete» attached to it comes from no source at all, so ask for dated site photographs instead of a percentage.

Two more towers trade here on nothing but portal data and broker copy: Enara (Omniyat) and XL Tower (DAMAC). Both are routinely self-contradictory on handover quarter, tenure or unit count — which is the difference between a rumour and an offer. Ask us about either and the primary document comes first.

One fact covers all five: every one is off-plan or building out, and one of them can only be bought second-hand. Haus of Tenet is off-plan against Q2 2028; LUMENA ALTA and HQ by Rove are off-plan with primary stock; Burj Capital is under construction; Lumena is off-plan against Q4 2029 and available only by resale or assignment. If your requirement is income starting this year, Business Bay's answer is the secondary market — an older tower bought from a private owner. Ready vs Off-Plan Offices sets out that trade.

• Which of the five bases is the price? A developer price list, the developer feed brokers work from, a broker asking price, a resale asking price and a sale the Land Department has recorded are five different numbers for one building, and in this district the gap between the launch figure and the resale floor ran to about a third on the flagship example above.
• Does the area belong to the same lot as the price? If not, any AED/ft² quoted to you is invented. Ask for the unit number, the floor and the measured area before you accept a rate.
• Mainstream or trophy? At 1,850–2,935/ft² the district yields 6.1–11.2% on asking; at 5,500–7,350/ft² it yields 4–5%. The postcode does not tell you which one you are buying.
• What does the fit-out add? Shell & core plus 214–524 AED/ft² for Business Bay, plus a 40–60% uplift over a basic fit-out for starting from shell. On a 596 ft² suite that is a six-figure line item, and it is not in the headline price.
• What is the building's actual service charge in Mollak? Not the district proxy of 15–20, and not the seller's estimate. It is public, it is per project, and it comes off the rent before you see it.

Read next: Sheikh Zayed Road Offices: Freehold Since 2025 — the 457-plot decision that opened a closed premium segment in January 2025, and why buildings sharing one road name can be thirty kilometres and two markets apart. The district table behind every number above is Dubai Office Districts: A Map-Led Investment Guide, and the pre-reservation checks are in Commercial Property Due Diligence. All five buildings, with their prices, are on the commercial section.