Total real estate transactions across the GCC region reached as much as $78.2 billion in the first quarter of 2025, growing between 20.5 percent and 22.3 percent, according to its latest estimates by Sakan. This strong performance follows a 25 percent increase in transactions last year to over $383 billion.
Dubai has once again emerged as the leading market in the GCC, posting $38.7 billion in sales and accounting for nearly half of the region’s total real estate transaction value. Dubai’s real estate transactions were 23.4 percent higher than the same period last year.
In second place came Saudi Arabia, the second-largest real estate market in the GCC, with transactions totaling at least $20.3 billion, capturing 26 percent of the region’s market share.
Abu Dhabi records highest growth
The UAE as a whole, including Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, and Ajman, collectively accounted for 65 percent of the GCC region’s total estimated real estate transaction value, highlighting the country’s importance in the growth of the region’s property market.
Abu Dhabi registered the largest year-on-year growth at 34.5 percent, followed by Sharjah at 31.9 percent, Ajman at 29 percent, and Kuwait at 24 percent.
Earlier this week, the Abu Dhabi Real Estate Center reported that the total transaction value grew by 34.5 percent to AED25.3 billion ($6.89 billion) across 6,896 deals in the first quarter of 2025, marking a significant increase from AED18.82 billion from 5,773 transactions during the same quarter of 2024.
Buy and sell transactions in Abu Dhabi totalled AED15.51 billion through 3,819 transactions, reflecting a 26.7 percent increase in value and an 11 percent rise in volume compared to the first quarter of 2024. Meanwhile, mortgage transactions reached AED9.8 billion through 3,077 transactions, a 49 per cent year-on-year increase.
“The GCC real estate sector recorded $383 billion in property transactions in 2024, growing by 25 percent. We now see this growth being sustained in the first quarter of the year, despite economic tensions across the world. As real estate continues to offer a safe haven for investors in the GCC region and with artificial intelligence beginning to enhance real estate transactions, we expect to see sustained momentum in the property sector throughout the rest of 2025,” stated Sakan CEO Abdullah Al Saleh.
Read| Dubai records over $1.3 billion real estate transactions in one day: Key trends driving growth
Factors propelling GCC real estate market’s boom
One of the major factors driving real estate growth in the GCC region is population growth. The number of people living in cities in the GCC is expected to grow by 30 percent between 2020 and 2030. The UNDP said 84.3 percent of the GCC population will be residing in urban areas by 2030.
Some cities are growing faster than others. In Riyadh, Knight Frank estimates that the city’s population will increase by 4.1 percent annually to reach 9.6 million by the end of the decade, with 5.5 million expats and 4.1 million Saudis. Urban planners anticipate that giga projects will stem the flow of rural migration to cities.
Dubai is another city witnessing a population boom. Between 2010 and 2024, Dubai’s population doubled from 1.91 million to 3.83 million. The emirate is likely to add 2.5 million more people by 2040.
A major driver of this population growth and housing demand in the GCC is the expatriate movement. There are approximately 30 million expats in the region, representing 52 percent of the population. While expats have mostly been an important market for residential property leasing, their role in the economy and the property market has been changing.
Expats are now becoming investors and business owners, prompting a shift from leasing properties to acquiring real estate. Dubai has been very responsive to this trend, announcing 457 plots available for freehold conversion in January 2025. Expats are also bringing their families to the GCC, which increases the population and subsequently the number of consumers in the economy. In countries where expats can bring their families, remittances are declining despite the growing expat population, as seen in the UAE.
