A third of Dubai property sales clear the golden visa threshold. Ten years ago it was a sixth

The UAE's long-term residence visa for property investors is the single most quoted reason foreigners give for buying in Dubai. The UAE Government portal sets the ten-year threshold at a registered property value of AED 2 million.

Nobody publishes how much of the market that actually describes. The register does, if you ask it.

34.6 percent of sales clear AED 2 million

In the twelve months to 15 July 2026, Dubai registered 179,915 residential sales. 62,217 of them were at or above AED 2 million.

Split by registration type, 43,284 of those were off-plan and 18,933 were ready. So a buyer reaching the threshold is roughly seven times out of ten doing it on an unbuilt unit, which matters, because the visa route through off-plan has conditions that a completed purchase does not.

The lower threshold sits far wider. 149,031 sales, 82.8 percent of the entire market, were at or above AED 750,000.

The share has doubled since 2020

Because the thresholds are fixed in dirhams and prices are not, the proportion of the market that clears them moves on its own. Apartment sales by year:

Year	Sales	At AED 750k and above	At AED 2m and above
2019	23,980	59.2%	17.3%
2020	20,235	55.9%	14.3%
2021	35,906	63.8%	22.8%
2022	62,567	72.7%	28.2%
2023	93,659	73.0%	29.2%
2024	136,005	78.1%	27.6%
2025	165,956	81.6%	28.2%
2026 (to 15 July)	71,529	77.8%	27.5%

In 2020 one apartment sale in seven cleared AED 2 million. By 2022 it was more than one in four, and it has held between 27 and 29 percent ever since. The AED 750,000 line went from 56 percent of apartment sales to about 80 percent over the same period, which means it has quietly stopped being a threshold at all for anything but the smallest studios.

The jump lands in 2021 and 2022, which is also when the AED 2 million threshold was introduced: the UAE Cabinet lowered the property route to AED 2 million in 2022, from a previous level that had put it out of reach of the mid-market. So the visible step in that column is a policy change and a price rise arriving together, not one or the other.

Why the apartment figure sits below the whole-market figure

34.6 percent of all residential sales clear AED 2 million, but only 27.5 percent of apartment sales do. The difference is villas and townhouses, which are a smaller share of the count and a much larger share of the value. If you are reading these numbers to judge how attainable the threshold is on an apartment, the 27.5 percent is the right one.

The important caveat, stated plainly

These are transactions, not visas. One buyer can register three purchases in a year and appear three times. Two people buying jointly appear once. And clearing the price threshold is not the same as qualifying: the government's own conditions cover completion status, approved developers for off-plan, and how mortgaged or combined properties are treated, none of which the register records in a way we can count.

What the register does tell you is the shape of the market around the threshold, and that shape has a clear practical reading. AED 2 million is now an ordinary Dubai price, not a premium one. The median residential sale is AED 1.4 million, the biggest single price band is AED 1 to 1.5 million, and a third of everything sold clears the ten-year line. A buyer choosing between a AED 1.7 million and a AED 2.1 million unit is making a residence decision as much as a property one, and the register says a lot of buyers are choosing the second.

Use these numbers

Every figure here is free to reproduce with attribution and a link back to this page. If you want this cut by area, by unit type, or against a different threshold, ask and we will send it.

To check a specific purchase against the published thresholds, our free golden visa checker walks through them. For the current official conditions, always check the UAE Government portal rather than an agency page, ours included.