Middle East Business
Dubai completed 104 property projects worth Dh111 billion in the first half
By Staff Writer | 21 August 2026
Completions rose from 75 projects to 104 and handed-over floor area reached 1.95 million square metres, with the land allocated to those schemes worth 135 per cent more than a year earlier.
The Dubai Land Department has reported that 104 real estate projects were completed in the emirate during the first half of 2026, against 75 in the same period of 2025, a rise of more than 38.7 per cent. The combined investment value of the completed schemes exceeded Dh111 billion, against Dh73 billion a year earlier, a rise of 52 per cent.
The completions delivered 24,537 new real estate units, up 36 per cent from 18,043. Built-up area completed and ready for handover reached 1.95 million square metres, up 23.4 per cent from 1.58 million square metres.
Dubai continues to create new opportunities for growth and sustainable expansion through continued comprehensive urban development that keeps pace with population and economic growth and future requirements, in line with the highest standards of quality of life.
Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of The Executive Council of Dubai
The land figure is the one to watch
The sharpest movement in the half is not in the completion count. The value of land allocated to projects rose 135 per cent to Dh19.46 billion, from Dh8.27 billion, and the land area allocated to completed projects more than doubled to about one million square metres, from 484,000 square metres.
Land allocated to completed projects is a backward-looking measure. It records the ground occupied by schemes that have just finished, not ground taken for schemes about to start, so it does not by itself size next year's pipeline.
The two land figures move together but say different things. Area more than doubled while value rose by rather more, which means the land under the schemes that completed this half was worth more per square metre than the land under those that completed last half. On a completions series that is a statement about what was bought three to five years ago, when these projects were being assembled, rather than about current land prices.
What a contractor can and cannot take from this
The firmest number for anyone planning resources is the built-up area: 1.95 million square metres handed over in six months. That is a measured quantity of finished work, and at 23.4 per cent growth it has risen more slowly than either the project count at 38.7 per cent or the investment value at 52 per cent. Read together, the three rates say the average completed project this half was smaller in floor area and dearer per square metre than the average completed project a year ago.
That pattern is consistent with a shift towards higher specification residential work, and it matters commercially, because a market delivering more valuable floor area rather than more floor area is one where variations, finishes packages and defects liability carry more money per square metre than they used to.
What the published summary does not give is any breakdown by asset class, by developer or by contractor, and no completion dates within the half. It states no figure for projects started, so it cannot be used to work out whether the pipeline behind these completions is growing or shrinking. A completions series records what has finished. It is silent on what has begun.
The department also gives no figure for units completed against units originally programmed for the period, which is the number that would show whether the emirate is delivering on time or catching up. Until that is published, 24,537 units is a delivery total and nothing more.
The next reading that will settle the direction is the second half count, because a completions series that rises on a falling number of starts turns down with a lag of several years, and nothing in this release shows which of the two is happening.