UHNWI and the migration of millionaires to Dubai

The most recent count is the twentieth Knight Frank Wealth Report, published in 2026. There are 713,626 people in the world with more than $30m. That is 32% more than in 2021: 162,191 people were added over five years, around 89 new UHNWI a day. The United States produced 41% of that growth, and its share rose from 33% to 35%.

The segment grows fastest where it is not already large. The Middle East’s share of the world’s UHNWI rises from 2.4% to 3.1% and holds at that level to 2031. The fastest-growing countries are Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, India, Poland and Vietnam; India is already sixth in the world by absolute numbers with 19,877 people, up 63% in five years.

Dubai is the main beneficiary. The number of millionaires in the city grew 102% over ten years, and the UAE is forecast to gain another 9,800 of them in 2026 along with up to $63bn of new capital. Prime residential prices in Dubai added 25.1% on the PIRI 100 index. In 2026 the city entered the world’s twenty wealthiest for the first time — a decade ago it was not in the top thirty.

The other side of the ledger is the United Kingdom. The forecast outflow for 2025 is 16,500 millionaires and $91.8bn of combined wealth; for the first time in ten years of Henley & Partners tracking, the country tops that list. The reasons are stated plainly: the end of the Tier 1 Investor Visa, the non-dom reform and inheritance tax. The UAE, meanwhile, has one of the world’s highest Wealth Mobility Competitiveness Scores at 85.3.

The move is visible in the air as well: London — Dubai is now among the ten busiest private aviation routes in the world. In 2025 there were 3.88m business jet departures globally, 34% above the pre-pandemic level, ultra-long-range activity was up 70%, and fractional flying up 75.5%.

Wealthy people change country more often than ever. Henley & Partners and New World Wealth estimate that the UAE took in about 6,700 millionaires in 2024 — twice as many as the United States, second on that list with 3,800. Then come Singapore (+3,500), Canada (+3,200), Australia (+2,500) and Italy (+2,200).

At the other end are China, with an outflow of about 15,200 millionaires, and the United Kingdom with 9,500. That outflow is exactly what creates housing demand in the receiving jurisdictions: someone who moves is not buying an "investment", but the place where the family will live.

What separates the receiving countries from the losing ones is not tax as such. The "Safe Haven 8" — the UAE, Singapore, Australia, Switzerland, New Zealand, Malta, Monaco and Mauritius — share different traits: 40% or more of the population born abroad, millionaire numbers up by 35% or more over a decade, high-income status in the World Bank classification and a low rate of violent crime.

The backdrop is the growth of the class itself. Capgemini’s World Wealth Report puts the number of HNWI worldwide at 8.6m in 2008 and 22.8m in 2023 — roughly two and a half times in fifteen years. More millionaires means more deals at the top of the market, and prime housing grows behind them everywhere.

An HNWI — high net worth individual — holds between $1m and $5m in investable assets; a very-HNWI between $5m and $30m; an ultra-HNWI more than $30m. There are around 23m such people in the world, 0.28% of the planet’s population. Of them 90% sit on the first rung, 9% on the second, and 1% — some 220,000 people — in the ultra segment.

The difference between the rungs is not the number of zeros but the structure of spending. The journalist Ray Hutton describes the average UHNWI as owning eight cars, three to five homes in different countries, a yacht in most cases and, for 75% of them, an aircraft. That buyer is not choosing between an apartment in Dubai and one in London: they take both, and the only question is where the next home goes.

Property itself remains asset number one. Asked by Knight Frank what they would do with an unexpected windfall, 29.8% of wealthy respondents said they would buy prime housing — ahead of a luxury car (27.8%), an aircraft (15.1%), art (12.4%) and a superyacht (8.9%).

The main shift of recent years is that the owner no longer lives in one house. Knight Frank finds that 73% of wealthy buyers hold several branded residences and only 27% a single one; a growing share spends fewer than 90 days a year in any one of them. Hence the demand for fully managed turnkey residences, ready to walk into at the push of a button, and the near-zero interest in anything that has to be looked after personally.

It works as a sales channel too: Altrata estimates that each UHNW individual knows, on average, seventy others. In this segment a recommendation outweighs any advertising, and a broker’s reputation is a working tool rather than a figure of speech.

They still spend heavily, but differently. Altrata’s priority scale is topped by cars, on the back of occasional very large purchases, followed by fine wine, private jets and yachts. At the same time $45bn a year goes into luxury hospitality and art: a shift from owning to experiencing, where art counts as both an experience and a long-term investment.

The counter-trend most visible in property is quiet wealth. Fewer trophy assets, more private ownership structures; private capital moves into climate technology, health and education. The project model changes with it: developers increasingly run the building’s ecosystem themselves rather than putting an outside hotel brand on it.

In floor plans this is literal, and our own deals show the same. The engineering disappears into the surfaces — integrated climate and lighting instead of control panels on the walls. The kitchen splits in two: a show kitchen for guests and a hidden working one. The apartment gains its own spa area and a soundproofed study for video calls. Further out is what developers are already designing into premium projects: medical zones for longevity, robotic parking galleries and planting with its own air-purification loop.

The first argument is the price of a square foot. Knight Frank calculates that a million dollars buys about 980 sq ft of prime housing in Dubai. In Monaco it buys 172, in Hong Kong 237, in Singapore 344, in London 355, in New York 366, in Miami 646. Among global centres only Madrid and Mumbai give more space for the same million.

The second is the trajectory. A million dollars put into prime housing in 2020 would have become $2.7m in Dubai by 2025 and $1.9m in Miami. That is the answer to why a buyer choosing between two warm tax-free cities increasingly picks the first.

The third is the safety of the bet itself. In the UBS Global Real Estate Bubble Index, Dubai does not fall into the overheating red zone that Zurich, Tokyo and Miami occupy consistently. That is not a guarantee of growth, but a real difference in the character of the risk: the market grows on an inflow of people and money rather than on cheap credit.

The fourth is what comes with the square footage. In a Knight Frank survey, wealthy buyers name Dubai’s main advantages as quality infrastructure (54%), its status as a global tourist destination (52%), the choice of investment assets (44%), the absence of income tax (41%) and value for money (40%).

The $10m-plus segment grew explosively. Between 2010 and 2020 Dubai sold between 5 and 31 such homes a year; in 2021 it was 93, in 2022 224, in 2023 431. There were 56 deals above $25m in 2023 against none in 2020. For 2023 as a whole Dubai came first in the world by the number of homes sold above $10m: 431 against 240 in London and 211 in New York.

The geography of that demand is narrow. Almost everything selling above AED 2,400 per sq ft sits in two centres: Palm Jumeirah with Dubai Marina in the west, and the Downtown — Business Bay — Jumeirah Bay cluster in the middle. Outside them, assets at this level appear one at a time.

The gaps within those locations are just as visible. In the first quarter of 2024, 39 of the deals above $10m were on Palm Jumeirah, 10 on Palm Jebel Ali and 7 in Business Bay. By value Palm Jumeirah took 36.3% of the market ($628m), Jumeirah Bay Island 11.1% ($191m) and Dubai Hills Estate 7% ($121m).

Branded residences are their own story. In the Knight Frank survey, 69% of the wealthy respondents would like to buy a branded residence in Dubai; among global HNWI that figure is 83%, and among East Asian buyers 91%. At the same time 56% see a branded residence purely as a capital-growth instrument.

This is where buying into an expensive project parts company with making money. In Royal Atlantis individual units resold at between +69% and +119.9%, in Bulgari Residences up to +162%, in Lana by Dorchester Collection up to +167%, and in One at Palm Jumeirah up to +169%.

But the spread inside a single project is no smaller than the spread between projects. In Six Senses Residences, apartments facing the Palm added +39% and +41%, while units of exactly the same size facing the road added +12% and +15.9%. The villas tell the same story: +49% against +12%. The conclusion is simple and unwelcome for anyone buying off a floor plan: a unit needs a premium view to resell well.

The second factor is whether the location is finished. Resales at Mr. C Residences on the Dubai Water Canal went the other way: −15% and −16%. The project is good, but what surrounds it has not been built — The Rings by PMR, Melgrano, Sea Mirror, Peninsula by H&H and Canal Front Residences were all unfinished at the time of the analysis. A top-end buyer pays for the surroundings, not for the excavation next door.

At the very top the numbers run into hundreds of millions of dirhams. In 2024 the most expensive apartment was a unit in Bayview at Marsa Dubai at AED 531m, and the most expensive villa a house on Palm Jumeirah at AED 203m.