Dubai's Big-Ticket Office Deals Triple as DIFC Registers 1,081 New Companies

Dubai's office-market report for the first half of 2025 flagged two figures worth reading together. The first: deals on offices priced above AED 10 million reached 83 — three times more than a year earlier. The second: DIFC registered 1,081 new companies, mostly in insurance, banking and asset management.

Why the two numbers are connected

A thousand new companies in the financial centre isn't an abstract measure of business activity — it's concrete demand for space in a district that has none to spare. Large purchase deals are the direct consequence: when leasing isn't an option, a company buys instead. Eighty-three deals above AED 10 million mean corporate and institutional buyers have entered the market, not just private investors picking up a single unit.

What analysts expect next

• Demand will keep outpacing supply — the arithmetic of new completions doesn't shift quickly.
• Grade A rents will keep rising.
• The gap between prime and secondary buildings will widen. This is the most practical of the three.

More on that gap

The split within what is nominally a single class is where private buyers most often get it wrong. They see “Grade A office on Sheikh Zayed Road” and compare the price per square foot to a new build, without accounting for the fact that a tenant paying top rent comes with requirements on building certification, parking ratios, lift capacity and engineering quality. A building that doesn't meet those requirements stays “Grade A” on paper and slides into a different price bracket in practice.

What to do with this

When choosing an office asset in Dubai, it makes sense to define the target tenant first and then look for the building that suits them — not the other way around. Buying cheap in a good area and figuring out the tenant later produces an asset that sits between segments and appeals to neither, and that gap is only growing.

Based on Knight Frank's Dubai office market review for the first half of 2025.