Dubai South: prices, sales and projects in 2026

Almost everything sold in Dubai South is new. 15,013 of the 12 months' 16,507 sales, 91%, were off-plan, bought from a developer before the building was finished; only 1,494 were ready homes. Flats made up 14,952 of the sales and villas and townhouses 1,109.

The count rose while Dubai's fell. The 16,507 sales are 73% more than the 9,528 of the 12 months before, in a period when all Dubai registered 16% fewer. The value barely moved, AED 25.09 billion against AED 24.76 billion. More sales for the same money means smaller homes: 46% of the flats sold were studios, and villa sales fell from 1,992 to 1,109.

Two things to hold in mind as you read on. First, concentration: sixteen buildings registered as Azizi Venice account for 8,630 sales, 52% of everything here, so the area's numbers lean heavily on one development. Second, coverage: the DLD's area for Dubai South, Madinat Al Mataar, also holds Expo City Dubai's projects, which registered 375 sales, about 2% of the total, and are counted here.

Dubai South describes itself as an emerging 145 square-kilometre master-planned city, launched as a Dubai Government project in 2006, and as the largest urban master development focusing on aviation, logistics and real estate. It offers free-zone benefits to businesses and a range of residential communities, and it names a Golf District near the airport among its parts (Dubai South, read 12 November 2026).

This is a city, not a neighbourhood, and its homes are far apart. On the map the Residential District is 6.2 km from the airport in one direction and Emaar South, in the golf district, 5.9 km in the other. Expo City Dubai, with the metro station of the same name, is 6.6 km to the north-west. Where a home is inside Dubai South matters as much as the fact that it's in Dubai South.

The register can't make that split for you. The DLD files every sale under one area name, Madinat Al Mataar. Until February 2026 a sale also carried one of two master project names, Dubai World Central or Dubai South Residential District; from March 2026 it carries neither. So this record gives the area as a whole and then splits it by project (section 6), where a project's name usually tells you which development it belongs to.

Five years ago Dubai South registered 849 sales in a year. The count has risen every year since: 2,081 in 2022, 2,983 in 2023, 7,645 in 2024 and 10,029 in 2025. The first ten months of 2026 have already passed that, at 14,570.

Nearly all of it is off-plan: 13,392 of 2026's sales, 92%. Off-plan sales are registered on the day a buyer signs, so they arrive in bursts. June 2026 alone held 2,924 sales, 2,803 of them off-plan, and one building, Azizi Venice 14, has registered 1,992 sales so far this year after 370 in 2024 and 346 in 2025. A total like this tells you how much was launched as much as how much demand there is.

Count and value have parted ways. 2025's 10,029 sales were worth AED 25.30 billion; 2026's 14,570 so far are worth AED 21.01 billion. The homes being sold are smaller: villa and townhouse sales went from 2,904 in 2024 to 1,953 in 2025 and 773 so far in 2026, while flat sales climbed.

The table shows the last 12 months by kind. The 1,109 villas and townhouses are worth AED 4.94 billion, and 793 of them were off-plan. Land accounts for 328 sales and AED 3.26 billion, which says more about developers buying plots than about homes.

With nine in ten sales off-plan, the headline figure is close to an off-plan price. Ready homes sit AED 572 per sq ft below it, at AED 1,112, against AED 1,069 a year earlier. If you're looking at a finished home, that's the figure that describes it, and it rests on far fewer sales.

The yearly chart shows how fast the mix changed. The median for all homes was AED 657 per sq ft in 2022, AED 923 in 2023, AED 1,414 in 2024 and AED 1,582 in 2025. Part of that is price, and part is the area moving from villas and townhouses to studios and one-bedroom flats, which cost more per sq ft. The ready line moved more slowly: AED 663 in 2022, AED 813 in 2023, AED 915 in 2024, AED 1,086 in 2025 and AED 1,104 so far in 2026.

One change in the register matters more here than in most areas. Since February 2026 it files villas as buildings, and this record's method leaves buildings out of a median. Dubai South sold 1,109 villas and townhouses in the 12 months, so this year's price per sq ft rests on flats, while earlier years included villas. Section 5 gives villa prices on their own.

Next door, Dubai Investments Park registered a median AED 1,455 per sq ft over the same 12 months, with ready homes at AED 795. All Dubai stood at AED 1,726.

Studios are the largest group by far: 6,878 of the 14,952 flats sold, and 97% of those sales were off-plan. The middle half of studio sales fell in a tight band, AED 599,000 to AED 699,000, which is what a market looks like when most sales come from developers' price lists and not from owners agreeing a price with buyers.

Villas and townhouses are a second market inside the first. Three-bedroom homes sold for a median AED 2,896,000 on 294 sales, four-bedroom homes for AED 4,500,000 on 496 and five-bedroom homes for AED 5,905,000 on 310. 72% of them were off-plan. The register gives a villa's area as its plot in most rows, so this record gives no price per sq ft for villas.

Be careful with year-on-year moves by size. The two-bedroom median went from AED 2,147,888 to AED 1,793,888, and the three-bedroom median from AED 2,922,039 to AED 2,437,414. Different projects were on sale in the two periods, so that's a change in what was sold, and the register alone can't tell you what happened to the price of any one home. Studios and one-bedroom flats edged up, from AED 620,000 and AED 1,152,698.

Rent isn't in this file. The sales register holds sales only, and this record doesn't work out a yield from a sale price and a rent taken from somewhere else. For the rent the DLD's own index gives for a home like yours, use the Rental Index look-up in section 9.

In a city this spread out, the project is the level that means something. The register names no district and, since March 2026, no building, but a project's name usually tells you which development it sits in. The table lists every project with at least ten sales.

Azizi Venice 14 leads with 2,044 sales at a median AED 1,648 per sq ft and a median sale of AED 650,000. Azizi Venice 6 follows with 1,017 at AED 2,031, then Azizi Venice 15 with 822 and Azizi Venice 7 with 814. Outside that development, Terra Gardens registered 543 sales at AED 2,114 per sq ft and Terra Woods 495 at AED 2,194, Windsor House 408 at AED 1,459 and Windsor House II 402 at AED 1,541. At the other end, Waada - Altura 1 and 2 sold at about AED 1,170 per sq ft, with a median sale of AED 475,000.

That's a range of more than AED 1,000 per sq ft between projects in the same DLD area, which is why an area median only takes you so far. Compare a home with its own project's row first.

The resale market is small and mostly unnamed. 561 sales carried no project name, all of them ready homes, at a median AED 771,965 and AED 1,074 per sq ft. A dash in the table means fewer than ten clean home sales stood behind a median.

Forty-seven new projects in 12 months shows how early Dubai South still is. A first sale in the register isn't a launch date or a handover date; it's the day the first home sale was registered.

The register holds a project's name, not its builder, so this record names a developer only where the registered name carries it. The sixteen Azizi Venice buildings registered 8,630 sales, every one of them off-plan. For any other project, the developer is on the DLD's Project Status Enquiry (section 9).

The table shows the ten busiest projects year by year. Azizi Venice 14 registered 370 sales in 2024, 346 in 2025 and 1,992 so far in 2026, so one building can sell across several years and in more than one wave. Most other rows are empty before 2025 because the projects are that new.

Dubai South's own account of where it's going is worth knowing, as long as you read it as a plan and not as a fact about any home. Its executive chairman has spoken of the government's vision of attracting 1 million residents to Dubai South upon the completion of Al Maktoum International Airport (Dubai South, read 12 November 2026). Handover dates, completion percentages and escrow details for a given project aren't in the sales register; section 9 shows where to look them up.

Distances inside Dubai South are large, so 'near the metro' or 'near the airport' depends entirely on which district you mean. Expo City Dubai station is 7.8 km from the Residential District in a straight line and further still from Emaar South. For most homes here, daily life runs on a car; check the route from the exact project before you rely on anything else.

For schools, KHDA, the Dubai regulator that inspects private schools, lists one under Dubai South: GEMS Founders School, teaching the UK curriculum from FS 1 to Year 9. It's listed as not inspected yet, so it has no rating to quote. KHDA's directory is the place to check any other school's rating and its year.

The city is planned around the airport. Dubai South describes itself as focused on aviation, logistics and real estate, and ties its plans to the completion of Al Maktoum International Airport. What's built and open today, district by district, is what you can check for yourself.

What this section can't give you is a feel for the place: how far the shops are from a given building today, or how the roads run at eight in the morning. Those you only learn by being there at the hours that matter to you.

A record like this one gives you the area's numbers. It can't tell you about the one building or the one flat you're looking at, and that's where the DLD's own tools come in. They're the same sources a professional would use, and they're open to anyone.

The service charge is the yearly fee owners pay for the upkeep of a building's shared parts. The DLD publishes it in its Service Charge Index by project, usage and year. It changes from one building to the next, so an area-wide figure would mislead you; look the project up by its registered name, which is the name used in the table in section 6.

For an off-plan home, the Project Status Enquiry shows the project's details and its completion percentage as the DLD holds them. For rent, the Rental Index asks for the contract's end date, the property type and either a DEWA premise number, an Ejari contract number or the area. Ejari is the DLD's registration of a tenancy contract, and DEWA is Dubai's electricity and water utility. In all three, search with the DLD's names: the area is Madinat Al Mataar, not Dubai South.

A few notes on reading these answers. Every price is a median of registered sales, not an asking price and not a valuation of any one home. Every count is of sales the DLD registered under Madinat Al Mataar, its name for Dubai South.

Some questions people ask can't be answered from a register, and this page doesn't try. Whether prices will go up or down is one: no register holds next year. Whether Dubai South is 'better' than Dubai Investments Park is another. The two can be compared on what was registered, and that's what the answers do; which one suits you depends on things only you know, like where you work and how much space you need.

Nothing here is financial, legal or investment advice. Rules and fees change, and the figures on this page are true to the day shown. Before you commit to anything, confirm the current position with the Dubai Land Department or a licensed professional.

The source is the DLD's sales transactions, published as open data through Dubai Pulse and released as one file by Dubai Real Estate Data (dubairealestatedata.com) under the CC BY 4.0 licence. Credit: Dubai Real Estate Data, based on Dubai Land Department open data. The other sources are Dubai South's own website, KHDA's Education Directory, OpenStreetMap for positions and distances, and the DLD's website for its look-ups, all read on 12 November 2026.

The method is the same on every withlida record. A count or a value takes every registered sale with a valid date; a value leaves out any price above AED 50,000 per sq ft as a typing error. A price per sq ft is the median of clean sales of built homes only, flats and villas, and is shown only where at least 10 sales stand behind it. Off-plan and ready sales are given apart. '12 months' means 3 November 2025 to 2 November 2026, and 2026 is always a part-year.

What it can't say: asking prices, rents, yields, service charges, handover dates and who built a project aren't in the register. From March 2026 the register no longer names a master project or a building, and it files villas as buildings, which this method leaves out of a median, so this year's price per sq ft rests on flats. The DLD area also holds Expo City Dubai, whose projects (375 sales in the 12 months) are counted here. Sales with no project name, 561 in the 12 months, can't be tied to a district or a building.

2026-11-12 · published · First record for Dubai South: sales by year, prices by size, every project with a sale, and daily facts. Sources accessed 12 November 2026.