Dubai’s prime residential market recorded Dh29.54 billion worth of transactions in 2020 despite the challenges caused by the pandemic.
Last year, the payment of greater than 10,557 apartments and 1,512 villas were recorded in Dubai’s prime residential market. Fourth-quarter was the highest performing quarter, recording Dh9.2 billion in terms of sales volume, as per the analysis by Luxhabitat Sotheby’s, rooted on data from the Dubai Land Department.
There has also been a 5.0 percent correction in price per sqft across the prime residential market from Dh1,327 to Dh1,193, hence providing a strong surge inflow in buyer activity, Luxhabitat said in a report.
The Dubai prime residential market areas used for the calculation included Al Barari, Arabian Ranches, Downtown Dubai, Dubai Marina, Business Bay, Emirates Living, Jumeirah, Jumeirah Beach Residence, Mohammed bin Rashid City, Jumeirah Golf Estates, Jumeirah Islands, Jumeirah Lake Towers, and Palm Jumeirah.
The main 3 areas in terms of sales volume were MBR City (Dh6.4 billion), Downtown Dubai (Dh5.1 billion), and Palm Jumeirah (Dh3.5 billion). The Jumeirah Beach Residence area showed the greatest growth of sales at Dh1.8 billion (five times higher than 2019), followed by Jumeirah (four times growth in sales at Dh 651 million) and Jumeirah Islands (two-fold growth in sales at Dh284 million).
Chris Whitehead, managing partner at the firm said “2020 proved the global stature of Luxhabitat Sotheby’s International Realty. During a year filled with economic uncertainty, we closed the year with over 1 billion AED worth of sales transactions”.
“We strongly believe that Dubai will play a key role in the post-pandemic scenario as well for how it has handled the pandemic issue on a global level while keeping the economy open. And 2021 will be a bigger, better year for us as well the Dubai property market,” said Whitehead.
In 2021, Dubai’s residential sector is expected to add 39,000 units following a gush in the providing in 2020, as per other surveys.
The previous year, the overall residential market noted the delivery of almost 36,000 units, providing an increase over the number of units that were added to the market in the last year, stated as per the data supplied by real estate consultancy Core.
The information for Asteco also provides that 2019 recorded a total of 31,000 residential units coming into the market in Dubai in 2019, incorporating a total of approximately 23,600 apartments along with 7,400 villas. As per the information of Data Finder, a total of 32,822 residential units in the freehold and also non-freehold communities were delivered in Dubai in the first 9 months of 2019 and the other 13,216 units have a completion date towards the end of 2019 or Q1 2020.
In the year 2020, the prime villa market remained static with an average price of about Dh6.3 million, about 3.0 percent higher than the previous year- providing that the clients were keen to buy villas in 2020. The affordability factor has risen and the trend reported was that the people were choosing to buy homes with wider spaces. Across all areas, there was an average of 1,000 square feet rise in the size of the villas transacted – summing up the average build-up-area of a prime villa 5,981 sqft.
Main apartments also remained static with the lowest to no cost correction at Dh 1,404 per square foot. The average main apartment now costs approximately Dh 1.8 million for a unit spanning 1,698 sqft in build-up-area.
As per the report, half the costliest expensive transactions in 2020 are from MBR City- Dubai Hills and District One developments form part of the area. Emirates Hills pursued to hold a place as one of the most expensive villas in Dubai.