This first edition starts with Dubai property. That's where our data is deepest and where we're watching most closely. September was quiet: 11,450 sales, 43.6% fewer than a year ago, while flat prices barely moved. We read that as buyers waiting, not sellers giving way. So we're holding rather than chasing. We expect sales to pick up over the coming weeks and months, and we'd rather be ready when they do than react after. Later editions widen out to energy, security and the rest of the Gulf. September gave you a market that keeps selling fewer things at roughly the same prices. Dubai Land Department recorded 11,450 sales for the month against 12,151 in August and 20,291 in September 2025, while the median price per square metre of flats sold moved down 1.9% on the month and 3.6% on the year. That gap between a volume figure falling by tens of percent and a price figure falling by low single digits is the whole story this month, and it's where we'd spend your attention rather than on the headline drop. We've set out below what the figures support, what they don't, and the places where we simply couldn't get a number worth printing. Our own desk added nothing in September and carries one live opportunity, which we state plainly rather than dress up.
Roman Jonas
Start with the count. Dubai recorded 11,450 sales in September 2026, against 12,151 in August, a move of -5.8%. Set against the average of the prior three months, 13,296, September came in 13.9% lower. Against September 2025, when 20,291 sales were recorded, the change is -43.6%.
That last number is the one that will travel, so handle it carefully. The comparison base is a year in which Dubai averaged 17,886 sales a month. February 2026 still produced 17,028, the highest month of this year, so the slowdown isn't something that has been in place since January. And September is not the low point of 2026. May was, at 10,450. September sits above that, below everything in the June to August stretch, and far below the 2025 run rate. Those three facts together describe a market that stepped down through the spring, stabilised in the middle of the year, and stepped down again in September.
Value fell further than count. All recorded sales in September came to AED 29.73bn, against AED 54.19bn in September 2025, a change of -45.1%. Average value per recorded sale was AED 2.6m against AED 2.7m a year earlier, a move of -2.8%. Treat that average with care, because it covers every property type in one pot, plots, villas and flats together, so it moves with whatever mix happened to transact. It's a description of the month's composition, not a price signal.
For price, we use the median price per square metre of flats sold. That was AED 17,956 in September, down 1.9% from August and down 3.6% from September 2025. Villas sold at a median of AED 15,950 per square metre in September. We don't have month-on-month or year-on-year changes for the villa median this time, so we won't imply a direction for villas. We also don't publish the all-sales average per square metre, because it swings with the mix of plots, villas and flats, sometimes by a quarter or more in a single month, and tells you nothing about what a given thing costs.
So: transaction count down 43.6% on the year, flat prices per square metre down 3.6% on the year. Fewer deals, at almost the same money per square metre. That's not a market clearing out inventory through price. It's a market where fewer parties are coming to the table and the ones who do are paying close to what they paid before.
The off-plan share is where the mix is shifting. Off-plan was 65.5% of September sales, down from 67.7% in August and from 70.7% in September 2025. Still the majority of what trades, but a shrinking one across both horizons. Off-plan volume is the part of the market most tied to new launches and payment-plan terms, and it's the part that can move fastest in either direction. A falling share alongside a falling total means the off-plan engine is contributing less than it did, and the completed market is holding a larger slice of a smaller pie.
Year to date, January to September 2026 produced 123,618 sales against 157,010 in the same months of 2025, a change of -21.3%. That's a useful corrective to the monthly figure. The full nine months are down about a fifth; September alone is down by more than twice that proportion. Either September is a sharp new leg down, or it's a soft month against a particularly strong September last year, or both. One month of data cannot separate those, and we won't pretend otherwise.
Here's what the figures can't tell you. They don't say who stopped buying. The Land Department export records transactions, not the nationality mix, the financing mix or the resale-versus-new split behind them, so any story about mortgage buyers versus cash buyers, or any one source of overseas demand, would be invented. They don't say what's happening to rents or yields, which matter more than capital values for anything held for income. They don't say whether September's dip is seasonal, because we haven't put a seasonal adjustment in front of you and we're not going to assert one from a single year of comparison. And they say nothing about supply hitting completion over the next four quarters, which is the variable most likely to decide whether that 3.6% price slip stays a slip.
What we'd hold onto from September: the volume contraction is real and has run since March, prices have conceded very little to it so far, and the off-plan share has been giving ground each month we look.
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