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Where Dubai Property Actually Qualifies for the Golden Visa

Across Dubai in 2026 so far, only 28.1% of freehold residential unit sales reached AED 2 million, the Golden Visa threshold. Put the other way: roughly seven in ten homes people actually bought this year do not qualify. The share runs from 99.7% in one community to zero in another, and that is the number worth knowing before you choose where to buy.

The short answer

The Golden Visa tests one number: the DLD-certified value of your property, AED 2 million or more, on the day you apply. Easy to state, hard to plan around, because whether a given community typically produces qualifying purchases varies enormously. In Palm Jabal Ali essentially every sale clears the line. In Dubai Industrial City, across 446 sales this year, not one did.

This is not advice about where to buy. Yield, service charges, handover risk and what you actually want to live in all matter more than a visa threshold. But if residency is part of why you are buying, buying where 0.3% of sales qualify is a decision worth making deliberately rather than by accident.

Every community with 150 or more sales

Sorted by the share of sales clearing AED 2 million.

Gross yield appears only where the rental registry carries enough matching records. A blank is a gap in the data, not a low yield. See the limits below.

How this was calculated

• Source. Two public exports from the Dubai Land Department, the transaction registry and the rental (Ejari) registry, both covering 1 January to 25 August 2026, downloaded on 25 August 2026.
• What is counted. Sales only, so mortgages and gift transfers are excluded. Freehold only, since non-freehold is closed to most foreign nationals. Residential only. Units only, so land and whole buildings are excluded.
• The qualifying share. The percentage of those sales with a recorded transaction value of AED 2,000,000 or more.
• Price per square foot. Median of transaction value divided by recorded area, converted from square metres.
• Gross yield. Median annual rent per square foot divided by median sale price per square foot, per community. Working per square foot rather than per unit avoids comparing a studio's rent against a three-bedroom's price.
• Inclusion threshold. Communities with at least 150 qualifying sales, and yields only where at least 50 rental records match. Smaller samples move too much to publish.

What this does not tell you

• It measures sales, not stock. This is what people bought this year, not what is listed today. That makes it a better guide to the real market than asking prices, but it is not an inventory count.
• The recorded transaction value is not automatically the DLD-certified value used for your application. They are usually close and they are not the same document. Confirm your own certified value with DLD before relying on it.
• Gross yield is gross. Service charges, agency fees, void periods and maintenance all come out of it, and the net figure lands well below, varying by building rather than by community.
• Missing yields are missing data, not zero returns. Newer communities such as Palm Jabal Ali, Dubai Harbour and City Walk carry almost no rental records because little has been handed over and rented yet. Separately, the sales and rental registries use different names for some communities, so those do not join.
• 2026 has been an unusual year. Transaction volumes moved sharply within it. A single period is a snapshot, not a trend.