More than 8 million real estate transactions were recorded during the two years, supported by the licensing of over 86,000 brokers and the approval of 75 digital platforms hosting more than 685,000 property listings.
Volume at this scale is a structural shift, not a cyclical uptick.
Cross the Gulf to Dubai and the numbers are larger but the underlying dynamic is recognizable.
Dubai recorded its strongest year on record in 2025, with 202,349 residential transactions totalling AED 546.8 billion.
The Dubai property market analysis for 2025 reveals a market running at a pace that would have seemed implausible five years ago.
Dubai's residential real estate market in Q3 2025 saw a record 56,854 home sales, up nearly 17 percent on Q3 2024, pushing the total for the year to the end of September to more than 148,000 sales with a total value of AED 401.7 billion.
The off-plan segment is doing the heaviest lifting.
Off-plan transactions accounted for 72.9 percent of total market activity, up from 69.3 percent in 2024, reflecting the market's increasing focus toward future developments.
The supply side of the Dubai property market analysis carries a detail that deserves attention.
Around 40,400 residential units were completed in 2025, below the initial projection of 82,600 units, resulting in a materialization rate of 48.9 percent.
That delivery shortfall, against a backdrop of over 150,000 new units launched in the same year, most of them scheduled for handover in 2028 and beyond, means the market is absorbing demand through paper assets rather than physical stock.
Average values rose 2.5 percent during Q3 2025, extending an unbroken run of quarterly growth that began in late 2020, though the rate of quarterly rises has eased to 3.2 percent between Q1 and Q3 2025, down from 4.34 percent in both 2023 and 2024.
The deceleration in price growth, combined with the delivery gap, points toward a market entering a more complex phase rather than a straightforward continuation of the prior cycle.
The buyer composition in Dubai adds another layer to the analysis.
Indian buyers lead with approximately 22 percent of all sales, followed by British buyers at 17 percent, Chinese at 14 percent, Saudi at 11 percent, and Russian at 9 percent in 2025.
Saudi nationals representing 11 percent of Dubai's transaction volume while simultaneously driving record activity in Riyadh residential property prices illustrates the degree to which GCC capital is moving across both markets simultaneously, not choosing between them.
The structural comparison between the two cities is instructive.
Average costs of $2,664 per square metre in Riyadh compare to Dubai's $7,602, Doha's $4,944, and Abu Dhabi's $5,977.
That pricing differential, nearly three to one between Riyadh and Dubai, reflects different market maturities, different foreign ownership frameworks, and different stages of infrastructure delivery. It also reflects the degree to which Saudi Vision 2030 real estate supply constraints are suppressing price discovery rather than enabling it. When supply cannot keep pace with a government-mandated demand stimulus, prices rise not because the market is healthy but because the pipeline is broken.
The Saudi Arabia real estate market was valued at $77.2 billion in 2025 and is expected to reach $141.6 billion by 2034, growing at a CAGR of 6.73 percent.
That trajectory assumes supply catches up. The evidence from Riyadh residential property prices and the delivery shortfalls visible in the Dubai property market analysis suggests that in both cities, the more consequential variable is not demand, which is demonstrably present, but the capacity of developers, contractors, and regulators to translate announced pipelines into completed units at the pace the market requires.
