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Practical guides on WhatsApp, lead response and CRM for Dubai brokerages. Real numbers, no fluff.
Tend Resources
Practical guides on WhatsApp, lead response and CRM for Dubai brokerages. Real numbers, no fluff.
Last updated 5 August 2026
Dubai recorded AED 917 billion across more than 270,000 property transactions in 2025, up 20% year on year. The Dubai Land Department lists 32,294 registered brokers, who earned AED 13.59 billion in commissions across 96,440 broker-executed transactions. Standard sales commission is 2%; rentals are typically 5% of annual rent.
A reference page of verifiable Dubai real estate figures, each with its source and period. Updated as new Dubai Land Department data is published.
Dubai recorded AED 917 billion across more than 270,000 transactions in 2025, up 20% year on year — the strongest performance in the market's history. The Dubai Land Department lists 9,785 registered brokerage offices and 32,294 licensed brokers at the end of the year.
| Metric | Value | Period | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total transaction value | AED 917 billion | 2025 | Dubai Land Department |
| Year-on-year growth | +20% | 2025 | Dubai Land Department |
| Number of transactions | 270,000+ | 2025 | Dubai Land Department |
| Registered brokerage offices | 9,785 | End 2025 | Dubai Land Department |
| Licensed brokers | 32,294 | End 2025 | Dubai Land Department |
| Average agents per office | 3.3 | Derived | 32,294 ÷ 9,785 |
That last figure is worth pausing on. The typical Dubai brokerage is not a large firm — it is a handful of agents. Software priced per agent is built for the exception, not the norm.
Dubai brokers earned AED 13.59 billion in commissions during 2025, up 31% year on year, across 96,440 broker-executed transactions. Broker-executed deals grew 54% while the overall market grew 20%, meaning the intermediated share of the market is expanding rather than shrinking.
| Metric | Value | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Broker commissions earned | AED 13.59 billion | 2025 |
| Commission growth year on year | +31% | 2025 |
| Broker-executed transactions | 96,440 | 2025 |
| Growth in broker-executed deals | +54% | 2025 |
| Commissions by women brokers | AED 2.98 billion | 2025 |
96,440 broker-executed transactions against 270,000+ total means brokers intermediate roughly a third of Dubai deals; the remainder are direct developer sales and other channels. The 54% growth figure is the one that matters strategically — the common claim that portals and direct developer sales are disintermediating brokers is not what the DLD data shows.
Off-plan dominates, but published estimates disagree: reported shares for 2025 range from 62.6% to 79% of transactions depending on the source and on whether the figure counts all transactions or residential sales only. Around 70% (roughly 149,230 deals worth AED 448 billion) is the most commonly cited midpoint.
| Segment | Reported share | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Off-plan | 62.6%–79% | Sources disagree; ~70% is the common midpoint |
| Secondary / resale | 21%–37% | 64,277 resale transactions, +26% year on year |
The disagreement is not sloppiness on any one publisher's part — different reports count different denominators (all transactions vs residential only vs sales excluding rentals). Treat any single quoted percentage with suspicion unless it states its denominator.
What is not in dispute: off-plan is the majority of the market, and resale volume still grew more than 26% year on year with average resale prices up more than 13%.
Dubai's average gross rental yield was 6.68% as of April 2026. Apartments average 7.15% and villas and townhouses 4.98%. Yields are inversely related to prestige: the highest returns are in affordable communities, while premium areas trade yield for capital appreciation.
| Community | Approx. gross yield | Segment |
|---|---|---|
| International City | 8.5–8.9% | Affordable apartments |
| Dubai Silicon Oasis | ~8.5% | Affordable apartments |
| Dubai South | ~8.1% | Affordable apartments |
| Jumeirah Village Circle | ~7.8% | Mid-market apartments |
| DAMAC Hills | ~7.5% | Mid-market |
| Dubai Hills / Creek Harbour | Below average | Premium, appreciation-led |
Gross yield ignores service charges, which vary enough between buildings to move net returns by more than a percentage point. Quote gross figures as gross.
Dubai apartments average AED 1,969 per sq ft and villas AED 2,241 per sq ft as of 2026. The spread between communities is far wider than that average suggests — Downtown Dubai runs about twice the price per square foot of Jumeirah Village Circle.
| Area | Price per sq ft | Segment |
|---|---|---|
| Downtown Dubai | ~AED 3,011 | Premium |
| Dubai apartments (average) | ~AED 1,969 | All |
| Jumeirah Village Circle | ~AED 1,510 | Mid-market |
Standard sales commission in Dubai is 2% of the sale price plus VAT, and rental commission is typically 5% of annual rent. Agents commonly split their commission 50/50 with the brokerage, though the split varies with performance and seniority.
| Transaction | Commission | Paid by |
|---|---|---|
| Sale | 2% of price + VAT | Typically the buyer |
| Rental | 5% of annual rent | Typically the tenant |
| Agent's share | ~50% of the above | Split with brokerage |
On an AED 1.7M apartment, total commission is about AED 34,000, of which the agent typically keeps half. Only RERA-licensed agents may legally charge commission in Dubai, and the licence is verifiable through the Dubai REST app.
fam Properties is the largest Dubai brokerage by headcount at roughly 1,500 agents, followed by White & Co at about 397 and Betterhomes at about 250. These firms are statistical outliers: with 32,294 brokers spread across 9,785 offices, the overwhelming majority of Dubai brokerages are small teams.
| Brokerage | Approx. agents |
|---|---|
| fam Properties | ~1,500 |
| White & Co | ~397 |
| Betterhomes | ~250 |
A single firm with 1,500 agents holds about 4.6% of all licensed brokers in Dubai. The shape of this market is a long tail of small offices, not a handful of large ones.
WhatsApp is the dominant channel: 85.8% of UAE residents aged 16-64 use it, the highest penetration in the region. Buyers typically contact four to eight agents about the same property, and 78% transact with whoever responds first. The average first response takes 42 hours.
| Behaviour | Figure |
|---|---|
| WhatsApp penetration (UAE, 16-64) | 85.8% |
| Agents contacted per enquiry | 4 to 8 |
| Buyers transacting with first responder | 78% |
| Average first response time | 42 hours |
| Enquiries arriving outside business hours | Over 60% |
| Enquiries never receiving a reply | 23% |
The 42-hour average comes from a 2011 Harvard Business Review audit of 2,241 companies across industries, not from Dubai-specific research. Treat it as a directional benchmark rather than a measured local constant.
Three conclusions follow from the data above, and they point in the same direction: the constraint on Dubai brokerage revenue is conversion speed, not lead volume or market size.
Lead volume is not the constraint. With AED 917 billion transacting and portals distributing enquiries widely, most brokerages receive more leads than they can convert.
Response speed is the constraint. When 78% of buyers work with the first responder and the average response takes 42 hours, the gap between those two facts is where commission is lost.
Small teams are the market. At 3.3 agents per office, tooling priced per seat penalises exactly the firms that make up the bulk of the market.
Figures on this page come from Dubai Land Department releases covering full-year 2025, published in early 2026, plus market data from Q1-Q2 2026 where noted. Every figure carries its period in the table it appears in.
This page is re-verified quarterly. DLD publishes new transaction and brokerage data on a rolling basis, and any figure here that is more than two quarters old should be treated as indicative rather than current.
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