Dubai’s office market posted an average sale price of AED 2,005 per square foot in the third quarter of 2026, up nearly 9 per cent on the same period last year, according to Cavendish Maxwell’s latest commercial real estate analysis.
Investors committed AED 4.3 billion across 1,100 transactions between July and September. That represents a 40 per cent increase in sales value compared to Q3 2025, though it marks a 42 per cent decline against Q2 2026. Cavendish Maxwell attributes the quarter-on-quarter drop largely to a fall in high-value deals: more than 200 office transactions worth AED 10 million or above were recorded in Q2, compared with around 80 in Q3. Transaction volumes, meanwhile, were 11.5 per cent higher than in Q2 but 3.6 per cent below the same quarter last year.
Average rents rose 6.5 per cent year-on-year to AED 187.5 per square foot. Both sale prices and rental rates eased marginally for the second consecutive quarter, which Cavendish Maxwell reads as market normalisation following strong growth in 2024 and 2025.
Downtown Jebel Ali displaced Business Bay as Dubai’s most active office submarket, recording 326 transactions — all off-plan — and accounting for nearly 30 per cent of citywide sales. New launches in the area, including Raw District by Imtiaz and Samana Business Hub, drove much of that activity. Business Bay came second with 271 sales, followed by Jumeirah Lakes Towers with 160, Motor City with 70 and Dubai Sports City with 41.
DIFC recorded the sharpest rent increase of any submarket at 14.7 per cent, more than double the citywide average. Barsha Heights followed at 9.1 per cent and Downtown Dubai at 8.1 per cent.
Off-plan deals took 63 per cent of all Q3 sales, representing around 700 of the 1,100 transactions. That is a marked shift from a year earlier, when ready office sales accounted for nearly 66 per cent of activity. Demand for smaller units drove much of the off-plan surge: offices below 1,000 sq ft saw demand rise more than 190 per cent year-on-year and represented 53 per cent of off-plan sales. At the larger end, units between 2,001 sq ft and 5,000 sq ft saw a 376% increase in off-plan activity. Ready sales were dominated by mid-sized offices of 1,000 sq ft to 2,000 sq ft, which made up 52.6% of that segment.
On supply, 44,100 sq m of new office space was delivered in Q3, bringing total 2026 completions to 136,400 sq m against a total stock base of more than 9.5 million sq m. A further 106,400 sq m is scheduled for delivery before year-end, with 400,000 sq m expected in 2027 and 528,000 sq m pencilled in for 2028. Some 2028 deliveries have already been pushed to 2029, reflecting construction delays on large-scale projects at early stages.
“Dubai’s office market demonstrated a mixed performance in Q3 2026, with transaction volumes showing signs of recovery following a subdued Q2, but still below the elevated levels recorded earlier in the year. Meanwhile, price and rental growth are moderating, signalling a period of market normalisation following sustained growth in recent quarters. Looking ahead, a degree of uncertainty remains regarding the market’s near-term trajectory, with performance over the coming quarters expected to provide greater clarity on emerging trends and the broader market outlook,” Vidhi Shah MRICS, Director, Head of Commercial Valuation at Cavendish Maxwell said in a statement.
