Abu Dhabi Beat Its Full-Year 2025 Home Sales by Mid-August

Abu Dhabi residential sales reached AED 86.3bn by mid-August 2026, past the AED 83.2bn booked in all of 2025, with 116 nationalities buying in the first half.

Abu Dhabi's residential sales reached AED 86.3 billion ($23.5 billion) by the middle of August 2026, according to figures reported on 12 August — already ahead of the AED 83.2 billion recorded across the whole of 2025, with four and a half months of the year still to run. Volume tells a slightly different story: roughly 31,000 transactions so far against about 41,000 for all of last year, which means the average deal has grown considerably rather than the market simply doing more of the same.

The growth was front-loaded

Transactions rose 86% year on year in the first quarter and 50% in the second. Include mortgaged deals and the year-to-date figure is AED 111 billion, against AED 118 billion for the whole of 2025. The Abu Dhabi Real Estate Centre reported AED 117 billion in total real estate transactions across the first half alone, more than double the year-earlier period, with foreign direct investment into the sector up sharply.

The buyer base widened, not just deepened

One hundred and sixteen nationalities invested in Abu Dhabi property in the first half of 2026, against 82 in the first half of 2025. The largest source markets were the United Kingdom, China, Russia, the United States, Germany and France. A jump of 34 nationalities in twelve months is unusual and points to distribution — international brokerage channels and residency-linked marketing — rather than to any single country's capital flows.

ValuStrat's Haider Tuaima described the market as showing "no material evidence of weakening demand." Savills' Ali Ishaq went further, calling Abu Dhabi "perhaps more resilient, less of a house of cards, than Dubai is."

Our own numbers argue for caution on price, not on volume

Glopra's Abu Dhabi snapshot of 23 July 2026 puts the city average at $4,826 per square metre with a gross rental yield of 5.76% and, because the UAE levies no personal income tax on rental income, that gross figure is also the net figure in our standardised non-resident case — a rarity among the 70 markets we track.

The caveat is in the valuation score. Abu Dhabi's price growth over the last twelve months is 27.8%, and our bubble risk reading is 78 out of 100, in the elevated band and close to Dubai's 81. Those scores measure how far current prices have moved relative to a market's own history on income, rents and credit — not a prediction of a fall. But a market absorbing record volume at 27.8% annual price growth is being repriced quickly, and the buyers arriving now are paying for the last two years of that move as well as whatever comes next.

Sources: AGBI https://www.agbi.com/analysis/real-estate/2026/08/abu-dhabi-property-sales-exceed-2025-by-mid-august/; Abu Dhabi Media Office (ADREC H1 2026) https://www.mediaoffice.abudhabi/en/economy/abu-dhabi-real-estate-centre-records-aed117bn-in-real-estate-transactions-in-h1-2026/

Market data: Abu Dhabi · Ras Al Khaimah · United Arab Emirates · Dubai