Abu Dhabi Monthly Brief — one island took 42% of the money (August 2026)

Abu Dhabi Monthly Market Brief

August 2026

 

August 2025 brought 2,100 sales worth AED 8,411M at a median of 18,060 AED/sqm. This August had 5% fewer sales, 31% more money, and a median 11% higher.

The Chart

Twelve months of residential sales. Each bar splits into completed homes at the base and off-plan above; the line is the median rate across all sales.

Following Up

July's brief described a backlog of Reem Hills off-plan re-sales going through at their launch prices, which pulled Al Reem's median down to 16,081 AED/sqm. It did not repeat. Owners re-sold 27 off-plan homes on the island in August, 10% of its off-plan business after 43% in July, and the median came back to 18,787.

New Launch

Modon's Hudayriyat Golf Estates recorded its first sales in August: 395 townhomes and 113 villas, 508 in all, for AED 3,769M. That is 26% of everything Abu Dhabi sold in August, and 34% of what it spent. Overall, Hudayriyat took 42% of the money in August.Modon announced the launch in July, saying it took more than AED 13 billion within days. It calls that the highest publicly recorded sales value for a single residential launch in the UAE. The announcement covered 1,700 homes. August's sales at the project came to 508. How those two counts relate, and whether the rest follows this autumn, is the open question.Property Finder lists the Golf Estates from AED 4.3M, on a 5/35/60 plan handing over in September 2030.

Two-Speed Market

Every share in this brief has Hudayriyat in its denominator. Here is the month with the island taken out.

August 2026	All Abu Dhabi	Without Hudayriyat
Homes sold	1,992	1,397
Value	AED 11,035M	AED 6,416M
Off-plan	85%	78%
Sold by the developer	75%	65%
Villas & townhouses	51%	34%
Owner re-sales, share of off-plan	16%	24%

Owners re-sold 24% of off-plan business outside Hudayriyat, against 33% in July on the same base. The emirate-wide figure of 16% reads as though the flipping wave broke; like for like it slowed, and it is still well above the 5–8% the market ran at through late 2025.Abu Dhabi looks like a villa market in August, at 51% of sales. Without Hudayriyat it is 34%, and it is an apartment market again.The rest of the market spent more on fewer homes: AED 6,416M against July's AED 4,303M, on 1,397 sales against 1,553.

Price Signal

Yas sold 202 homes in August, down 49% on July. Its median rate fell to 20,478 AED/sqm, 17.5% below its three-month average — the sharpest move of the districts we cover in detail.Much of that is one project going quiet. Yas Park Place sold 642 homes over the previous three months at a median of 27,472, against 25,071 for the island over the same period; in August it sold 17. It does not explain all of it. Take Yas Park Place out of both periods and the island's median still falls by 8.2%.Owners now do 66% of the island's off-plan business, against 16% last August. That is arithmetic, not a wave of new sellers: developer off-plan sales fell from 257 in July to 52, while owner re-sales held at 98 then 100.Gardenia Bay took 52 sales, 44 of them from owners, at 20,760. The Sustainable City took 30, 24 from owners, at 13,946 — against Yas Park Place's 27,472.

Brand Watch

Al Raha Beach printed a median of 24,670 AED/sqm in August, the highest on record for the district, on 52 sales after 112 in July.Hilton Residences sold 23 of those 52 homes at a median of 31,297 AED/sqm. Take them out and the other 29 sales come in at 18,526. The record belongs to one building. On Al Maryah the same month, Jumeirah Residences' first 22 sales printed 52,924 AED/sqm, more than double the emirate's median.

What it rents for

This month we analysed the quarterly rent data for the second quarter of 2026. Across the districts we track, 57,416 homes had a lease running at the end of June, at an average of AED 106,536 a year, up 7.0% on the same quarter of 2025.ADREC's half-year report puts new-lease prices for apartments up 17% across the emirate, and 21% inside the investment zones. Neither contradicts ours; they measure different things. Theirs is what a new tenant signs, for apartments. Ours is every lease still running at the end of June whenever it was signed.Prices moved faster than rents in every tracked district where both can be measured, so buying to let got more expensive in all of them.Al Reem shows the widest gap: prices up 27.2%, rents up 1.2%, on the largest rental market of the districts we cover. That 1.2% is not a trick of composition. Hold the mix of property types and bed counts fixed at last year's weights and the figure is 1.5%.One-bed apartments, 45% of the island's leased homes, rose 5.5%. Two- and three-bed apartments barely moved: two-beds rose 0.8% and three-beds fell 0.4%. Between them those two carry 55% of the island's rent bill. Both peaked in the third quarter of last year and sit below that level now. Al Reem's rent growth is low because rents for its two- and three-bed apartments stopped rising. The data shows which categories stalled. It does not show why.The yields in the table set an average rent against a median price and deduct nothing for service charges, vacancy or management. Read them as a ranking, not a return.

Rent is the mean on leases running at the end of 2026 Q2, so it lags what a home lets for today; the total row is all 17 districts we track. Price y/y is the median ready-sale AED/sqm over the 12 months to 30 June 2026, against the 12 months before. Yields are gross, on the property types with enough of both to match — a ranking, not a return. A dash means too little data to measure that figure. Hudayriyat Island has no leased stock yet — sold, not yet handed over.

District Snapshot — August 2026

The table covers the six districts we report in detail each month. The total row covers all 17 Abu Dhabi districts we track.

Elsewhere

Ramhan Island was the second-biggest tracked district by value in August, at AED 1,879M across 126 sales. Phase 5 alone sold 90 homes for AED 1,344M at a median of 43,661 AED/sqm, a project record; our brief for the week of 24 August covered it.At the other end, Al Bahyah sold 160 homes at a median of 4,968 AED/sqm against the month's 20,075, 153 of them at Bal Ghaiylam.Outside the totals, along the coast towards Dubai, Ghadeer Al Tayr sold 89 homes for AED 375M, 81 of them the first at Qasr Al Jurf Phase 3B. Ghantout sold 6 for AED 60M.

Methodology. Transaction figures cover residential sales registered across the 17 Abu Dhabi districts we follow during August 2026, computed from ADREC registration data and analysed by Guru Real Estate. Ghadeer Al Tayr, Ghantout and other districts outside this universe are excluded from the reported totals, although notable activity may be discussed separately. Registration dates lag sale dates; the most recent month may revise upward. Market news items link to their sources. This brief is for information only and is not investment advice.

Prepared by Guru Real Estate · Abu Dhabi
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