The Dubai secondary market in 2025: 66,451 transactions and AED 86bn of resale profit
Owners of off-plan property are regularly told the resale market has stalled. The figures say otherwise: about 180 transactions a day including weekends. What the profit number does and does not mean.
Owners of property under construction hear regularly that the Dubai resale market has stopped. That claim can only be tested with numbers, and the numbers exist.
2025 in the secondary market
- 66,451 transactions over the year.
- AED 238bn of total sales volume.
- AED 1,490 per square foot average price.
- AED 86bn of seller profit on resale — roughly $23bn.
Sixty-six thousand transactions is about 180 a day, weekends included. A conversation about a market that does not function does not survive that volume.
What the profit figure is
AED 86bn is the difference between purchase price and sale price across every resold property in the year. Its nature matters: it is a market aggregate, not the average result of an individual seller. Inside the same dataset sit transactions closed at a loss — they are simply outweighed by profitable ones.
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Anyone quoting that number as evidence that "resale in Dubai returns 86 billion" is misreading it. What it establishes is that the market as a whole was in profit, which is a different and weaker claim than that any given seller was.
Reading the average price
An average of AED 1,490 per foot sits below the headline figures quoted for prime districts, and that is expected: the secondary market is dominated by mid-market stock in dense districts, not by waterfront apartments. It is the average of what actually changes hands, which is a more honest picture of the market than the average of what is advertised.
What an owner should take from it
The resale market works, at scale, every day. What it does not do is absorb an overpriced property, in 2025 or in any other year. The transaction count says a buyer exists; the price you achieve is still set by comparables, condition and how the property is presented.
For an off-plan owner planning to exit before handover, the relevant comparison is not this total but the depth of the market in your specific building — how many units in it traded last year, and at what. That number is available, and it is far more useful than the emirate-wide aggregate.