Methodology v1.0
Research methodology: definitions and sources
How every figure is defined, and where it comes from. Applied from the Q3 2026 issue. Scales and weights stay fixed across issues, so readings compare over time; any change is announced with the issue that makes it.
01
Definitions
- Residential sale
- A DLD transaction in group Sales with residential usage, property class apartment (Unit/Flat), villa or townhouse, registered through a market sale procedure (Sale, Sell, Delayed Sell, Sale On Payment Plan, Sell (Pre registration), Sell Development, Development Registration). Lease-to-own, land additions, hotel apartments, offices, shops and land plots are excluded. Mortgages and gifts are not sales.
- Off-plan and ready
- DLD registration type Off-Plan Properties (history file) / Off-Plan (daily file); everything else is ready.
- Primary and resale
- Procedures with Pre-registration or Development in the name (developer is a party). Plain Sale/Sell variants are resale (secondary).
- Cleaning for medians
- Medians and AED per sq ft use sales with price above AED 50,000, size above 100 sq ft and price per sq ft between AED 100 and 30,000. Counts and values use every residential sale.
- Area basis
- Each project is placed in the official land district it was registered under before 13 Feb 2026 (its most frequent label); sales after that date inherit the project's district even where the source now carries a community label. Market names are shown where the district maps 1:1 to one.
- Ticket bands
- Registered sale price per transaction.
- Concentration and breadth
- Shares of residential sales (count) and of sales value (AED) in the 5, 10 and 20 areas with the most activity in the quarter; HHI is the sum of squared area shares (x10,000); effective areas = 1/HHI.
- Registered pipeline
- Projects with status Active, Not Started or Conditional Activating in the DLD project-status export of 7 Oct 2026 and a registered unit count in the DLD per-project register (8 Oct 2026; the Dubai Data projects dataset of 15 Jun 2026 where DLD returned none). Units = apartments + villas registered.
- Estimated remaining registered units
- Prop971 estimate: registered units multiplied by the share of construction still to complete (100% minus the completion %). Not a DLD-published number.
- Pipeline-to-absorption
- Estimated remaining registered units / residential sales in the 12 months to 30 Sep 2026.
- Rent windows
- Registered residential leases (Ejari export of 6 Oct 2026), contracts starting in the 12 months to 30 Sep 2026 versus the 12 months before; annual rent between AED 5,000 and 5,000,000.
- Indicative gross rental yield
- Indicative gross rental yield = median registered annual rent / median registered ready (not off-plan) sale price for the same bedroom count, over the same 12 months. Not a property-level return: no costs, vacancy or financing.
- Price-rent divergence
- Price-rent divergence = 12-month change in median ready apartment price per sq ft minus 12-month change in median apartment rent, percentage points.
- Prop971 Market Balance Index
- Prop971 Market Balance Index v1.0: weighted average of six component scores (0 to 100), each a linear scale of a published input with the bounds stated. Higher = firmer market conditions on balance; 50 = neutral.
- Abu Dhabi residential sale
- Registered residential sales from ADREC's transaction-level sales export: apartments, duplexes, penthouses, villas and townhouses; court-mandated sales excluded. Medians use full-share sales with a recorded floor area, a price above AED 50,000 and AED 100 to 30,000 per sq ft. Counts and values use every such sale; the series runs from January 2019 on one basis.
- Abu Dhabi off-plan, first sales and cash
- Off-plan and ready are ADREC's sale application types; first sales are ADREC's Primary sale sequence. Cash shares are ADREC's own yearly financing tally (homes only), which counts developer payment plans as cash.
- Abu Dhabi rents and indicative yield
- ADREC's published quarterly district averages (all contracts, renewals included) over the 12 districts with the most registered sales in the past year. Yield = ADREC average annual rent / ADREC average sale price for the same district and layout, where both are published; the layout figures are medians across districts.
- Abu Dhabi index (provisional)
- The same six components, weights and scales as Dubai. Supply pressure uses ADREC's projected additional units to 2030 against the past 12 months of registered sales; rental momentum uses ADREC's rent price index for apartments in Abu Dhabi City; breadth is scored against the Q4 2024 to Q4 2025 average.
02
Labels
Observed What the registry data directly shows: counts, values, medians and shares as recorded.
Derived A Prop971 calculation from that data, with its definition, cleaning rule and sample size.
Interpreted What we believe a pattern means. Always kept separate from the first two, and never a forecast.
03
Revisions
Registry data arrives with a lag and historical figures can change; a later issue that restates a figure says so and why. Figures are rounded for display; calculations use unrounded values.
04
Primary sources
| Source | What it provides | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Dubai Land Department (DLD) | Registered residential sales; rent registrations; project status, completion and registered units | dubailand.gov.ae |
| Dubai Data (Dubai Data and Statistics Establishment) | Transaction history; project areas; Ejari rent contracts; Dubai Population Now | data.dubai |
| Abu Dhabi Real Estate Centre (ADREC) | Registered sales; price indices; leases; district rents; market reports | adrec.gov.ae |
| Central Bank of the UAE | EIBOR fixings | centralbank.ae |
