68% of Active Dubai Buyers Plan to Purchase Within Six Months
A survey of 4,735 active users of the UAE’s largest listings platform found nearly seven in ten intend to buy property within six months — despite expecting prices to correct. Here’s what that says about the structure of demand.
Property Finder's Market Pulse survey, run from March to April 2026 among 4,735 active platform users, produced a number that sits awkwardly next to talk of a paralysed market: about 68% of respondents plan to buy property within the next six months.
What matters here — and what doesn't
An important caveat on the data first: this wasn't a survey of the population, but of people who were actively searching for property on the platform at the time. It's not a cross-section of demand in the economy — it's a cross-section of sentiment among people already in the process. Expecting a low share of intending buyers here would have been odd.
The value of the number lies elsewhere — in how it sits next to sentiment. The same buyers, in the same period, voiced concerns about a possible price decline. Expecting a correction and intending to buy coexist in the same head, and the first doesn't cancel the second.
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Why
- Most Dubai purchases aren't speculative. Someone relocating buys for their own life, not for an index forecast.
- Expecting a correction works as a trigger, not a brake. A buyer waiting for a discount comes to the market to negotiate, not to leave it.
- The alternative to buying is renting, which also costs money in Dubai, and over a long enough time horizon the arithmetic tilts toward buying.
Practical takeaway
For a seller, it means there is a buyer in the market — but one who showed up with a calculator and an expectation of a discount. For a buyer, it means competition for good properties hasn't gone anywhere, and counting on an empty market of desperate sellers isn't realistic.
Based on the Property Finder Market Pulse survey, March–April 2026.
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