Dubai Marina Transaction Depth: 1,780 Sales and Almost No Off-Plan

Dubai Marina registered 1,780 apartment sales over the last 12 months, and only 7.6 percent of them were off-plan. In a city where whole communities trade almost entirely on payment plans, that makes Marina unusual. It is a finished market, where owners sell to owners.

Off-plan share tells you who you will be standing next to on the day you sell.

At 7.6 percent, almost every registered sale in Dubai Marina last year was a completed unit moving between private parties. There is no meaningful launch pipeline setting the reference price. There is no wave of handovers arriving to undercut your listing with a payment plan.

Your competition is other owners. Owners have mortgages, service charges and lives that change. They do not run promotions and they do not have a quarterly sales target. They price to the last comparable sale in the building, which is exactly the market a resale buyer wants to sell into.

1,780 registered sales in 12 months is a deep market for a single community.

That depth does two jobs for you. It gives valuers and mortgage underwriters recent, relevant comparables, which keeps financing available to the person buying from you. And it means your unit is a known quantity. People who want Marina search Marina. You will not have to educate anyone about the location, the beach, or the tram.

Thin markets are where owners get stuck for a year and then accept whatever is offered. This is not one of those markets.

One bedroom units accounted for 816 sales. Two bedroom units accounted for 593. Studios accounted for 228.

The two bedroom count is the number worth noticing. Across much of Dubai the two bedroom is the slow unit, bought by fewer people and sold over a longer window. In Dubai Marina it sits close behind the one bedroom. So a two bedroom here is a reasonable buy for someone who wants the extra room and still wants to sell inside a normal timeframe, which is not true everywhere.

Studios are the thin end at 228 sales. They still trade, but with the fewest recent buyers of the three types. Expect the longest sale and the least pricing power if you go that route.

The median sale was AED 1,560,000 and the median unit measured 87.4 sqm.

Use both together, never one alone. A price of AED 1,560,000 tells you almost nothing on its own, because a small unit at that price and a large one at that price are different investments with different buyers. The median Marina sale is a proper one bedroom or a compact two bedroom, not a studio.

If you are shown something well under 87.4 sqm at around the median price, the premium is coming from somewhere. Floor, view, tower, or a renovation you did not ask for and may not recover. Make the agent say which, then decide whether the next buyer will pay for the same thing.

| Measure | Dubai Marina, last 12 months |

| Registered sale transactions | 1,780 |

| Median transaction value | AED 1,560,000 |

| Off-plan share | 7.6% |

| Median unit size | 87.4 sqm |

| Studio sales | 228 |

| One bedroom sales | 816 |

| Two bedroom sales | 593 |

Source: registered Dubai Land Department sale transactions, apartments only, priced AED 200,000 to AED 2.5 million, last 12 months. Registered sales, not asking prices.

A finished market asks for the money now. There is no three year payment plan smoothing the cost, so you need the cash or the mortgage approved before you start looking seriously.

And because the stock is finished, the building itself becomes the investment. Not the render, the building. Service charges, chiller arrangement, the state of the lifts, how many units the landlord across the corridor is running as holiday lets, whether the tower has an active owners association or a dormant one. In an off-plan community you are betting on a plan. Here you are buying a track record, which is better, as long as you actually read it.

Oliva underwrites one specific unit for you, free. Not the community and not the tower, the unit: the floor, the line, the service charge, the current rent, all checked against the registered transactions around it. Sometimes we come back and say buy. Sometimes we say buy the same line six floors up. Often enough we say do not buy this one, and that is the point, because Oliva is a Dubai brokerage with no paid placements and no developer pays us to prefer their stock.