Al Barsha South Fourth: 4,090 Registered Sales in 12 Months

Al Barsha South Fourth registered 4,090 unit sales over the last 12 months, and only 39.0% of them were off-plan. Most buyers here bought something that already exists.

Start with that split, because the off-plan share is not a sentiment statistic. It is a description of the people you will be standing next to on the day you try to sell.

"Transaction depth" is a dull phrase for a simple question. How hard will this be to sell?

Every figure on this page comes from registered Dubai Land Department transactions, units only, priced between AED 200,000 and AED 2.5 million, over the last 12 months. Registered means signed, paid and recorded. Not listings. Not asking prices. Not a developer projection.

4,090 of them means 4,090 people did the thing you are about to do. They chose this community, at roughly this budget, and completed. When you sell later, you need one of those people to show up again. A community with that many registered sales in a year has a working second-hand market. A community with a few hundred does not, and the cost of a thin market lands on you as service charges and mortgage payments while you wait for a buyer.

Depth also protects your price in a way most first-time buyers miss. When similar units trade every month, your buyer's bank has real comparables to value against. When they do not, the mortgage valuation becomes a guess, and a low valuation kills the deal after you have already taken the unit off the market.

39.0% off-plan means the clear majority of registered sales in Al Barsha South Fourth were completed units moving from one owner to another.

That is good news for anyone who expects to sell a finished apartment. In a community dominated by launches, you sell against a developer sales office. The office offers a payment plan, sometimes a fee contribution, and a building nobody has lived in. You cannot match any of that, so you cut your price to compensate. Here the resale market is the main event. Your buyer compares your apartment against other apartments, and the contest is decided on floor, light, layout, condition and service charge. Those are all things you can control at the moment you buy.

The trade runs the other way too. A lower off-plan share means fewer launch discounts and fewer long payment plans available to you right now, as the buyer. If your plan depends on paying in instalments during construction, this community offers that route less often than the launch-heavy districts do.

The counts by unit type show where demand actually sits. One-bedroom apartments recorded 2,267 registered sales. Studios recorded 1,101. Two-bedroom apartments recorded 644. Other sizes make up the balance of the 4,090.

Read those as buyer pools rather than trivia. Buy a one-bed and you sit in the deepest pool in the community. Buy a two-bed and your future buyer comes from a much smaller group, so plan for a longer marketing period.

That does not make the two-bed a bad purchase. A smaller pool often comes with less competing supply when you list. It does mean you need a genuinely good two-bed rather than an average one, because volume will not rescue a mediocre unit.

| Figure | Value |

| Registered unit sales, last 12 months | 4,090 |

| Off-plan share | 39.0% |

| Median transaction value | AED 917,000 |

| Median unit size | 71.4 sqm |

| Studio sales | 1,101 |

| One-bedroom sales | 2,267 |

| Two-bedroom sales | 644 |

Source: registered DLD transactions, units only, AED 200,000 to AED 2.5 million, last 12 months.

The median transaction value is AED 917,000 and the median unit size is 71.4 square metres. A median is the middle of a wide range, not a price tag. Half of the registered sales landed below it.

Two apartments on the same floor plan in the same building can sit far apart on price. Floor level, orientation, the actual view rather than the brochure view, the service charge per square foot, build quality, and whether the seller has a deadline. None of that appears in a community figure.

So use the community numbers for one decision only. Is this a market I can get out of? Then judge the specific unit entirely on its own merits.

Ask for the service charge history, not just the current year. Ask how many units in that specific tower traded in the last year and at what prices, then check whether your price sits inside that band or above it. Ask why the seller is selling.

Oliva is a Dubai brokerage with no paid placements, RERA BRN 1573501. Send us the unit you are considering in Al Barsha South Fourth and we will underwrite it for free against the registered transaction record, the building's own trading history and the service charge. Sometimes the answer is buy. Sometimes the answer is do not buy this one, and we will say so just as plainly.