Off plan or ready? In Business Bay, new apartments cost 42% more per square metre
Most buyers who come to Dubai for the first time are shown off plan. New towers, payment plans, a launch event. Very few are shown the apartments that already stand a few hundred metres away and change hands every week. The registered sales show how far apart the two prices are.
In the twelve months to 15 September 2026, the Dubai Land Department registered 6,548 apartment sales in Business Bay. 4,192 of them, almost two in three, were off plan. The median off plan sale was AED 29,192 per square metre, about USD 7,950. The median ready apartment sold for AED 20,548 per square metre, about USD 5,600. That is a difference of 42 per cent.
What that means for one apartment
Take a 1,000 square foot apartment, which is about 93 square metres. At the off plan median it costs about AED 2,712,000, roughly USD 738,000. At the ready median it costs about AED 1,909,000, roughly USD 520,000. The same floor area, in the same district, is AED 803,000 apart, about USD 219,000. The dirham is pegged to the US dollar at 3.6725, so the dollar figures hold steady.
Business Bay is not an exception. In The Greens, The Views, The Lakes and The Hills, registered together as Al Thanyah Third, off plan apartments sold at a median of AED 26,129 per square metre against AED 19,851 for ready apartments, a difference of 32 per cent. There, off plan is only one sale in fourteen, so the ready market sets the price for almost everyone.
What the difference pays for
Not all of it is overpaying. Part of the gap is real and worth something to you.
- A newer building. Many of the ready apartments in Business Bay are in towers finished more than ten years ago. A new building has newer lifts, finishes and systems, and years before its first major repairs.
- The payment plan. Paying over three or four years instead of on transfer day has a cost, and the developer builds it into the price. A plan that asks for 60 per cent after handover works like a loan, and the price includes its interest.
- Which towers are selling. Branded and waterfront launches sit in the off plan figures and can pull the median up. A median compares different buildings, not the same apartment.
What is left after those is the part you should question: the launch premium, the marketing and the commission built into a new release.
What the gap does to your yield
Rent does not depend on what the owner paid. In Business Bay, new rental contracts over the same twelve months had a median rent of AED 1,323 per square metre a year. Against the ready median price, that is a gross yield of 6.4 per cent. Against the off plan median, it is 4.5 per cent. A new building can command a somewhat higher rent, but rarely enough to close a difference of that size.
The same applies when you sell. The day your off plan apartment is handed over, it becomes a ready apartment, and the next buyer will compare it with the ready apartments around it, not with the launch price you paid.
What I would do before choosing
- Compare the off plan price with registered resales in the same area and in buildings of a similar age, not with the area average.
- Work out what the payment plan is worth to you, in money, and set it against the difference in price.
- Calculate the yield on the price you would actually pay, using rents that comparable apartments have actually achieved.
- Check the developer's record on the Dubai Land Department project register: finished projects, delays and cancellations.
- Decide how you would sell, because you will be selling a ready apartment.
Off plan can be the right choice. It should be a choice made against the ready price next door, not in place of it. That comparison is what a Ledgard area snapshot sets out: off plan and ready registrations side by side, for apartments and villas separately, with rents and an area yield indication from the same registers.
Figures are medians of residential apartment sales registered with the Dubai Land Department over the twelve months to 15 September 2026, after removing registrations that do not reflect a normal sale, and of new Ejari rental contracts over the same period. Off plan figures include resales of off plan units as well as sales by developers. Medians compare different buildings, not the same apartment, and the yields are area indications, not the yield of any property.