The Dubai Freehold Premium: What the Data Shows, and What It Does Not

Dubai freehold units sell at a median of AED 18,231 per square metre. Leasehold units sell at AED 9,154. Roughly double, measured across registered sales over the last 24 months.

Most writing on Dubai tenure stops at that comparison and lets you draw the obvious conclusion. This post does the opposite, because the obvious conclusion is wrong, and acting on it with a high value property is expensive.

Your question is narrower anyway. You own leasehold, and you want to know what a change of tenure would be worth on your unit, in your building. The figures below will not answer that. The reason why, and what would, is the rest of this post.

Definitions first, so you can judge the numbers rather than trust them. Registered Dubai Land Department sales, units only, last 24 months, price between AED 300,000 and AED 50,000,000, floor area above 20 square metres.

| Registered DLD sales, 24 months | Leasehold | Freehold | Tenure not recorded |

| Transactions | 4,228 | 232,367 | 52,619 |

| Median price | AED 686,980 | AED 1,321,106 | AED 1,100,000 |

| Median per square metre | AED 9,154 | AED 18,231 | AED 17,644 |

| Sales at AED 5,000,000 and above | 12 | 10,769 | 1,477 |

| Median of those sales | AED 16,100,000 | AED 7,378,000 | AED 7,480,000 |

The third column is there on purpose. In 52,619 registered sales the tenure is not recorded, and that group prices at AED 17,644 per square metre, close to the freehold median. A cleaner presentation would drop it. Leaving it in tells you the split is not a tidy binary, and that anyone quoting a precise tenure premium is working from a record where tenure is missing on a large share of the sales.

Both medians are accurate. The comparison between them is not a controlled experiment.

These are two different populations of property, not one property priced under two titles. The two groups are not matched on location, on building age or on property type, and nothing in a median controls for any of that. When freehold prices at roughly double per square metre, that is a description of what those two groups of stock are and where they stand. It is not the measured effect of a change of title.

Nothing in those 232,367 freehold sales tells you what your unit would fetch under a different tenure. Measuring that would need the same building, the same floor, the same layout, sold both ways, in volume. The record does not contain that comparison, so we will not pretend it does.

Which means Oliva will not tell you that a change of tenure doubles your value, adds a percentage to it, or produces a number of dirhams. A brokerage that quotes a citywide gap as a property level uplift is handing you a number it cannot stand behind, and you are the one holding the position when the resale fails to clear at that price.

Strip out the price comparison and the volume comparison remains, and it is harder to argue with.

Freehold recorded 232,367 sales in 24 months. Leasehold recorded 4,228. About 55 times the activity. Volume says nothing about what a single property is worth. It says how many buyers were in the room, and how often a comparable traded.

At the top of the market the difference stops being a ratio and becomes a wall. Above AED 5,000,000, the record holds 10,769 freehold sales and 12 leasehold sales. Twelve, in two years, across the whole emirate. One roughly every two months.

Those 12 sales carry a median of AED 16,100,000, above the freehold figure of AED 7,378,000. Read that as scarcity, not as strength. Twelve transactions cannot price anything, and a few unusual assets move a median wherever they like. What twelve tells you is that a high value leasehold exit is a rare event, and rare events get negotiated one buyer at a time.

That is the real cost of leasehold at your price point. Not a discount you can quantify in advance, but a buyer pool you cannot count on when you need it.

Registered Ejari contracts, units, last 18 months, annual rent between AED 15,000 and AED 2,000,000. Freehold median rent is AED 69,695 across 101,180 contracts. Leasehold median rent is AED 57,750 across 74,430 contracts. The gap is about 21%.

The same caveat applies with equal force. Two different populations again, in different places, of different ages, with a different mix of stock. Nobody has shown that a tenant pays 21% more for the same flat because of the title behind it.

The volumes are the interesting part. Sales split 232,367 against 4,228. Rentals split 101,180 against 74,430, which is close to even by comparison. Whatever sits behind that, it is consistent with everything else here: the leasehold problem shows up when you sell, not while you hold.

A per property figure is not something a citywide median can produce. It comes from comparables, and the comparables have to be close.

Start with registered sales in your own building over the last 24 months, then the immediately adjacent plots. Filter to your unit type, your floor band and a similar layout. Look at what those actually closed at, not at asking prices. Then set the rent on your unit against rents in the same building.

If that search comes back with no leasehold comparables in the period, or close to none, that is not a failed analysis. That is the liquidity answer arriving early, and it is usually the most important line on the page.

Eligibility is a separate question, and it depends on the specific property. Nothing in a table of citywide medians can settle it, and neither can any blanket answer you read anywhere, ours included. Get it checked against your own unit before you plan around it. We deal with that question separately here: How to Convert Leasehold to Freehold in Dubai.

If you plan to hold the property and collect rent, these figures do not make the case for you. The citywide rent gap of 21% is not adjusted for location, building age or property type, so it is not a figure for your building, and it is certainly not a figure for your unit. Whatever a change of tenure would cost on your property has to be set against whatever rent difference it actually produces there. That is a break even calculation, it needs real numbers for your own unit on both sides of it, and you should see those numbers before you commit to anything.

If selling is the plan rather than holding, the argument is stronger, and it rests on depth rather than on price. The freehold market recorded 232,367 sales against 4,228 for leasehold, and above AED 5,000,000 it recorded 10,769 against 12. That is a difference in how many buyers are in the room, and it is the part of this that the record actually supports.

Some owners read that and go ahead. Some read it and decide their unit is fine as it is. Both are defensible. What is not defensible is going ahead because someone told you the value would double.

Send us the building name and unit number. We will pull the registered DLD sales for that building and the adjacent plots, show you which comparables exist and which do not, and tell you plainly if the case looks thin.

Oliva is a Dubai brokerage with no paid placements.

Oliva Research, Market Intelligence Team. RERA BRN 1573501, DLD Broker Card 92025. Figures in this post come from registered Dubai Land Department sales and registered Ejari contracts.