The Dubai office market: 108 million square feet, and annual supply below half-year demand
Total stock is 107.9m sq ft. Announced 2025 completions were 848,800 sq ft while take-up in the first half alone passed a million. Why supply cannot catch up, and which sectors are pulling demand.
Dubai's total office stock stands at 107.9 million square feet. Announced completions for 2025 were 848,800 square feet. Take-up in the first half of that year alone exceeded a million. The rest of the argument follows from those three numbers: annual delivery is smaller than half-year absorption.
Why supply does not catch up
An office tower takes three to four years from decision to keys, and that is assuming the decision gets made at all. For most of the past decade developer capital in Dubai went into residential: faster turnover, a comprehensible buyer, and the ability to sell off-plan from a hole in the ground. An office project requires a different calculation — underwritten by a future tenant rather than by a future purchaser — and few of them were launched.
Space conceived in response to the present shortage arrives towards the end of the decade. Between now and then the constraint holds.
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What is pulling demand
- Non-oil economic growth. Finance, professional services, logistics, technology and tourism — five sectors, each of which consumes office floor area.
- International companies arriving. Regional headquarters relocate wholesale rather than opening a three-desk representative office.
- Government policy. The free zone regime, visa programmes and the general ease of setting up keep the number of registered companies rising.
What it means for an owner
A market where annual supply is below half-year demand does two things. It pushes rents — Dubai office rents have run double-digit growth for three consecutive years. And it changes the risk profile of buying: the classic danger of acquiring an office is the void between completion and the first tenant, and in a market at this level of tightness that void is short.
The obvious caution applies. Conditions like these are cyclical, and the pipeline arriving late in the decade is real. An investment case built on today's vacancy holding for ten years is not a case; one built on the current rent with a normalised vacancy assumption is.