Who Actually Buys Leasehold in Dubai, and What That Does to Your Exit

Over the last 24 months, the Dubai Land Department registered 12 leasehold unit sales above AED 5,000,000. Freehold recorded 10,769.

That is about one high-ticket leasehold sale every two months, across the entire emirate.

If you own a leasehold property worth several million dirhams, that count should shape your thinking more than any price comparison.

Across all price points, registered DLD sales of units over the last 24 months split like this: 4,228 leasehold against 232,367 freehold. Freehold volume runs about 55 times leasehold volume.

One caveat. Another 52,619 registered sales carry no tenure flag, so anyone quoting a precise leasehold market share is rounding over that gap. Add every unrecorded sale to the leasehold side and freehold still outsells it several times over.

Below the top of the market, leasehold trades. The median leasehold sale sits at AED 686,980, against AED 1,321,106 for freehold. If your property sits near that leasehold median, you have a functioning market, and most of what follows applies to you only lightly.

Twelve transactions in two years is not a market. It is a handful of unusual deals.

The recorded median across those 12 is AED 16,100,000, and that number is worth almost nothing to you. A median drawn from 12 observations describes what a dozen specific properties did. Do not price off it, and do not let anyone price you off it.

The other side is a real market: 10,769 freehold sales above AED 5,000,000 at a median of AED 7,378,000, plus 1,477 unrecorded-tenure sales at a median of AED 7,480,000.

| Segment, last 24 months | Leasehold | Freehold | Tenure not recorded |

| Sales, AED 300k to 50M | 4,228 | 232,367 | 52,619 |

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

| Median price per sqm | AED 9,154 | AED 18,231 | AED 17,644 |

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

| Median above AED 5,000,000 | AED 16,100,000 | AED 7,378,000 | AED 7,480,000 |

Most high-value leasehold owners say they fear their property is worth less than the equivalent freehold. That is the easy fear, and the wrong one.

The real risk is that nobody shows up. You list, the phone stays quiet, and eventually one interested party arrives and you negotiate with the only person in the room. Carrying costs run the whole time. The price is not set by the market. It is set by your patience running out first.

A thin buyer pool does not announce itself as a discount. It arrives as time, and the discount follows.

It also breaks price discovery. With so few comparable registered sales at the top of the leasehold market, every party works from weak evidence. Buyers discount uncertainty. So do valuers. You have little registered data to argue back with.

Two things narrow it further, and both work in general terms rather than as fixed rules.

Financing is the first. Whether a particular buyer can borrow against a particular leasehold property is a question about that specific property, and it has to be answered for that property rather than assumed from anything general. We do not publish thresholds here, because there is no single rule we could state that would hold for every property and every buyer. The effect on you is what matters. A purchase that opens with an unanswered question is a purchase some buyers never start, so the pool skews toward the buyers who do not need to ask it. Those buyers are fewer, more experienced, and negotiate harder.

Neither point says your property is poor. Both say buyers take the path with fewer questions.

The freehold median of AED 18,231 per sqm against the leasehold AED 9,154 is roughly double. That comparison is real, and it is also two different populations of buildings.

Dubai freehold stock sits in different districts, is generally newer, and is a different mix of building types. The gap measures what the stock is and where it stands. It does not measure what a change of title would do to one specific flat. Every comparison in this post, the sales table included, sets one group of properties against a different group of properties. None of it is the same property measured before and after a change of tenure.

So nobody, including us, can tell you that converting your property doubles its value, adds a percentage, or produces a specific gain in dirhams. Any such figure is manufactured. If a broker hands you one, ask which registered transactions produced it, because this dataset cannot.

The defensible argument is narrower and more useful. The freehold market is far deeper, it prices at a far higher rate per square metre, and above AED 5M the leasehold resale market barely exists. Liquidity is the honest case. Value uplift is not.

Leasehold rents fine. Over the last 18 months, Ejari registered 74,430 leasehold unit contracts against 101,180 freehold. Median leasehold rent is AED 57,750 against AED 69,695 freehold, about 21% higher on the freehold side, again across different stock.

The volume gap is nothing like the sales gap. Tenants care far less about tenure than buyers do. Holding and letting is therefore a real option rather than a defeat, and it keeps you out of a forced sale.

Price to the pool that exists, not to the freehold building across the road.

Have your paperwork assembled before a buyer asks for it. Find out which documents apply to your specific property, and get them in order early rather than working them out while an offer sits on the table. In a thin market, ambiguity is what buyers discount hardest, and it is the cheapest thing to fix.

Market to a cash-weighted, experienced buyer rather than a broad audience that is not there.

Give yourself runway you do not need. A deadline is the most expensive thing you can bring to a market this thin.

Check eligibility rather than assuming it. What is open to your property depends on that property, so have it checked for that property. You cannot settle it from an area name or a forum post.

If your property sits near the leasehold median and you intend to hold and let it, the conversion question may buy you nothing you can measure. The rental data says the income side is largely intact. Chasing a title change to fix a liquidity problem you do not plan to have is effort spent on a problem you do not have.

If you hold something above AED 5M and expect to sell it, the liquidity problem is real, and the first question is eligibility, not price. If your property is not eligible, wanting it to be does not change that, and the right move is to plan an exit around a small pool: longer runway, correct pricing, no deadline.

The uncomfortable version: for some owners the honest answer is that the property is a good hold and a difficult sale, and no process fixes that.

Send us the details of your property. We will look at what your title actually is, what is open to that specific property, and what registered comparable evidence exists in your segment. If a change of tenure is unavailable, or available and not worth pursuing, we will tell you that.

Oliva is a Dubai brokerage with no paid placements.

Data note. Sales are registered DLD transactions for units, last 24 months, AED 300,000 to AED 50,000,000, floor area above 20 sqm. Rents are registered Ejari contracts for units, last 18 months, AED 15,000 to AED 2,000,000 annual. Tenure reflects the DLD freehold flag as recorded.

Oliva Research, Market Intelligence Team. RERA BRN 1573501, DLD Broker Card 92025. Nothing here is personal investment advice.