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About UAE Price Index

An independent property price observatory for the Gulf region

Quick GCC Price Comparison

Dubai mid-range: ~160 sqm | Riyadh: ~267 sqm | Doha freehold: ~133 sqm

Our Mission

UAE Price Index is an independent property price observatory dedicated to providing transparent, data-driven market estimates for real estate across the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. We aim to help researchers, potential buyers, renters, and market watchers understand broad pricing trends across the Gulf Cooperation Council region.

The GCC property market can be opaque, with pricing information scattered across multiple sources and varying in quality and recency. Our mission is to aggregate, cross-reference, and present this data in a clear, accessible format, while being transparent about our methodology and the limitations of our estimates.

We are not a real estate agency, brokerage, or investment firm. We do not sell property, arrange transactions, or provide investment advice. Our role is purely informational: to provide estimated market data that can serve as a starting point for further research and professional consultation.

About the Author

Mottalib Radif

Mottalib Radif

MBA INSEAD | Real Estate Market Enthusiast

Mottalib Radif is a market analyst with experience across the GCC region. With an MBA from INSEAD, one of the world's leading business schools, Mottalib brings analytical rigour to real estate market research. His work focuses on making property market data accessible and understandable for a broad audience.

Mottalib also operates taxfreesalaries.com, a salary and employment resource for the Gulf, arabiaexpat.com, an expat relocation guide, and thedubaisetup.com, a guide to business setup in the Gulf region. This network of sites provides comprehensive information for anyone considering living, working, or investing in the GCC.

Methodology

Our property price estimates are compiled using a multi-source approach:

Data Sources

  1. Government transaction registries: Where available, we use official transaction data from bodies such as the Dubai Land Department (DLD/Dubai REST), Abu Dhabi Department of Municipalities and Transport (DMT), and Saudi Arabia's REGA. Government data provides the most reliable transaction-based pricing information.
  2. Real estate portals: We collect asking price data from major listing platforms (Bayut, Property Finder, Dubizzle, and equivalent platforms in Qatar and Saudi Arabia). Asking prices are adjusted to reflect typical negotiation margins, as actual transaction prices are generally lower than list prices.
  3. Industry reports: We reference published reports from international consultancies including JLL, Knight Frank, CBRE, ValuStrat, and Savills. These reports provide benchmark pricing, yield analysis, and market trend data.
  4. Developer price lists: For newer developments, we reference published developer price lists, which provide direct pricing for new units.

Estimation Process

We cross-reference data from multiple sources to produce area-level price estimates. Where sources conflict (which is common, as different data sets may cover different time periods or property types), we apply judgment to determine a reasonable estimate, generally weighted towards transaction data where available. Our estimates represent approximate average prices per square metre for a typical property in each area and are not specific to any individual unit.

Limitations

Our estimates have important limitations that users should understand:

  • They are averages and do not reflect the price of any specific property. Individual unit prices vary based on floor, view, condition, furnishing, and exact location.
  • They may be time-lagged, reflecting data that may be weeks or months old by the time of publication.
  • They have varying accuracy by country: UAE estimates (particularly Dubai) are the most reliable due to superior data availability; Saudi estimates carry the widest uncertainty.
  • They should not be used for transactions. Anyone buying or selling property should obtain a professional valuation from a licensed valuer.

Coverage and Scope

UAE Price Index covers three GCC countries -- the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia -- providing estimated property prices per square metre for residential properties across major cities and neighbourhoods. Our coverage spans premium waterfront developments in Dubai and Doha to affordable residential communities in Sharjah, Ajman, and the Saudi Eastern Province.

Within each country, we track pricing at the area level, providing estimated buy prices, annual rent prices per sqm, gross rental yields, and year-on-year price changes. This granular approach allows users to compare not just countries or cities, but specific neighbourhoods, enabling more precise analysis for buyers, renters, and investors evaluating different locations.

Our platform also provides analytical tools including a mortgage calculator calibrated for GCC markets, a rental yield calculator with country-specific benchmarks, and a price per sqm comparator for side-by-side area analysis. These tools run entirely in the user's browser with no data collection, reflecting our commitment to user privacy and accessibility.

Why GCC Property Data Matters

The GCC region hosts millions of expatriate residents and attracts billions of dollars in property investment annually. Yet reliable, independent property price data has historically been difficult for individuals to access. Government registries like Dubai's DLD provide excellent transaction-level data for their jurisdiction, but cross-border comparisons are not readily available. Commercial portals publish asking prices rather than transaction values, which can overstate actual market prices by 5-15%. Industry reports from consultancies are often gated behind subscriptions or focused on institutional-grade analysis.

UAE Price Index fills this gap by aggregating multiple data sources into a single, freely accessible platform. While our estimates carry the limitations inherent in any aggregation exercise (see our methodology page for full details), they provide a useful starting point for anyone seeking to understand broad pricing patterns across GCC property markets. We believe that better access to market information leads to better-informed decisions, whether those decisions involve buying, renting, investing, or simply understanding the market.

How We Handle Data Quality

Data quality is the foundation of our platform's credibility. We employ a multi-source approach, cross-referencing government transaction data (where available), asking prices from major property portals, and published benchmarks from international consultancies. Where sources conflict, we investigate the cause -- whether it stems from different time periods, property type mixes, or methodological differences -- and present estimates that reflect our best judgment of the current market.

Our confidence level varies by market. UAE estimates, particularly for Dubai, benefit from the excellent data infrastructure provided by the DLD and RERA, and carry the highest confidence level. Qatar estimates rely on a narrower set of sources and carry wider uncertainty. Saudi Arabia estimates, while improving as REGA and GASTAT enhance their data programmes, currently carry the widest margins of uncertainty. We are transparent about these differences and encourage users to weight our estimates accordingly.

Editorial Independence

UAE Price Index is editorially independent. We do not accept payment from developers, agents, or any market participants in exchange for favourable coverage or data manipulation. Our estimates are produced solely on the basis of available data and our analytical methodology.

We may earn revenue through advertising, affiliate relationships, or other commercial arrangements, but these do not influence our data, analysis, or editorial content. Any commercial relationships will be clearly disclosed.

Data Sources

Sister Sites

Market Coverage in Detail

Our UAE coverage is the most comprehensive, reflecting the maturity and transparency of the market. For Dubai, we track over 40 distinct areas, from ultra-premium communities like Palm Jumeirah, Emirates Hills, and Downtown Dubai to affordable areas like International City, Discovery Gardens, and Dubai Investment Park. Abu Dhabi coverage spans key investment zones including Al Reem Island, Saadiyat Island, Yas Island, Al Raha Beach, and Khalifa City. Sharjah coverage includes Muwaileh, Al Nahda, and Al Khan, while we also track select areas in Ajman and Ras Al Khaimah.

For Qatar, our focus is on Doha and its surrounding developments, particularly the freehold zones where foreign buyers can participate. The Pearl-Qatar, Lusail City, West Bay, Bin Mahmoud, and Al Sadd represent the core of our Qatar coverage, with pricing data that reflects both the premium freehold segment and the wider leasehold market. The Qatar market is smaller than the UAE, and our coverage is correspondingly more concentrated but still provides meaningful benchmarks for the most active areas.

Saudi Arabia coverage centres on the three largest cities: Riyadh, Jeddah, and the Dammam-Khobar-Dhahran metropolitan area (often referred to as the Eastern Province cities). Within Riyadh, we track premium districts like Al Olaya, Al Malqa, KAFD, and Al Yasmin alongside developing areas. Jeddah coverage includes Al Hamra, Obhur, and Al Andalus, while Eastern Province data covers Al Khobar's Corniche district and Dhahran's residential zones.

Updates and Roadmap

UAE Price Index is continuously evolving. Our data is reviewed and updated periodically to reflect the latest available market information. Price per sqm estimates are refreshed quarterly, aligned with the publication cycles of our primary data sources. Regulatory and ownership guide content is updated promptly following any published changes to property laws or ownership rules in our covered markets.

Looking ahead, we plan to expand our coverage to include additional GCC markets and more granular data for existing markets. Potential future developments include neighbourhood-level price maps, historical price trend visualisations, and enhanced comparative analytics. We welcome suggestions from our users on features and data that would be most valuable for their property research needs.

Technology and Platform Architecture

UAE Price Index is built as a static site, meaning all pages are pre-rendered and served as pure HTML, CSS, and JavaScript without requiring server-side processing for page loads. This architecture provides extremely fast loading times, strong security (there is no server-side application to exploit), and reliable availability. Our interactive calculators and charts use client-side JavaScript that runs entirely in your browser.

The choice of a static architecture also reflects our commitment to user privacy. Because there is no server-side application processing page requests, we do not capture user behavior data, search queries, or calculator inputs. The only analytics we employ are basic traffic analytics that do not track individual users or store personally identifiable information. This is a deliberate design choice: we believe that property research tools should be accessible without surveillance or data harvesting.

Our data pipeline processes source data from multiple providers, normalises it to a per-square-metre basis, applies our quality assurance checks, and generates the static pages that you see on the site. This pipeline runs on a periodic schedule aligned with our update cycle (quarterly for price data, more frequently for editorial and regulatory content). All source data is retained for historical comparison and trend analysis.

Contact

For data corrections, methodological questions, or general enquiries, please reach out through our contact channels. We welcome feedback from market participants, industry experts, and users of our data.