Motor City: 3,381 Registered Sales and Where the Depth Actually Sits

Motor City registered 3,381 unit sales over the last 12 months. One-bedroom apartments accounted for 1,884 of them. Studios accounted for 675.

That gap is the most useful thing on this page. The community is active, but the activity is not spread evenly across sizes, and your exit depends on your size rather than on the community headline.

Transaction depth is a plain question. How hard will this be to sell?

Every figure here 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 the sale completed and was recorded with the DLD. Not listings. Not asking prices.

3,381 completed sales in a year gives you two things. It gives you a buyer pool that has already proved it exists. And it gives your future buyer's bank recent comparables to value against. Most people focus on the first and ignore the second. The second is what actually breaks deals. If a valuer cannot find recent registered sales like yours, the mortgage valuation comes in low, the buyer cannot bridge the gap, and you go back to market having lost weeks.

One-bedroom apartments recorded 1,884 registered sales. Two-bedroom apartments recorded 702. Studios recorded 675. Other sizes make up the balance of the 3,381.

So the one-bed is the engine of this market by a wide margin, and studios and two-beds sit in similar, much smaller pools.

If you are shopping for a studio here on the assumption that studios are the easy investor entry, check that assumption against the record. 675 registered studio sales is your realistic buyer pool, not 3,381. That does not make a studio unbuyable. It means you should expect a longer sale, price your exit conservatively, and only buy a studio here if it is clearly better than the others in its building on floor, layout or view.

If you are shopping for a one-bed, you are in the deepest part of this market. That is where you can afford to be slightly less exceptional on the unit itself, because volume will help carry you.

71.0% of registered sales were off-plan. Motor City has completed stock and it also has active new supply. Both are trading.

As a buyer, that means launch pricing and payment plans are on the table. As a future seller, it means you will list while developer inventory is still selling nearby. A sales office can offer instalments and a fee contribution. You cannot. You compete on the things a finished apartment has and a floor plan does not: possession today, a real view rather than a rendered one, a known service charge, and a tenant already paying rent.

There is a second effect that catches investors out. Off-plan buyers arrive in waves and hand over in waves. When a tower completes, a cluster of near-identical units hits the market in the same window and the only difference between them is price. If your unit is ordinary, you become the discount in that comparison. Buy something that will still look distinct on the day everyone lists.

| Figure | Value |

| Registered unit sales, last 12 months | 3,381 |

| Off-plan share | 71.0% |

| Median transaction value | AED 1,146,722 |

| Median unit size | 71.8 sqm |

| Studio sales | 675 |

| One-bedroom sales | 1,884 |

| Two-bedroom sales | 702 |

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

The median transaction value is AED 1,146,722 and the median unit size is 71.8 square metres. Half of the registered sales landed below that price.

A median describes the middle of the market, not a fair price for any particular apartment. Two units on the same floor plan can trade far apart because of floor level, orientation, view, service charge, build quality and how urgently the seller needs to move.

Use the community figures for exactly one judgement: can I get out of this market when I want to? Then take the specific unit and price it on its own evidence, which means the registered sales inside its own building.

Get the building's own trading history, not the community's. Get the actual service charge for the last full year, not a projected figure. If a tenant is in place, read the tenancy and the renewal date, because a below-market rent transfers to you. If the unit is off-plan, get the payment plan and the handover date in writing.

Oliva is a Dubai brokerage with no paid placements, RERA BRN 1573501. Send us the specific unit you are looking at in Motor City and we will underwrite it for free against the registered transaction record, the building's own sales, the service charge and the tenancy. You get a verdict, and the verdict is sometimes do not buy.