Two apartments with almost the same price can be very different value. Price per square foot (AED/sqft) is how you see that: the sale price divided by the size sold. It strips away the headline number and shows what you are actually paying for space.
Same price, three times the space
Two completed sales in Jumeirah Village Circle, both registered with the Dubai Land Department in 2026, at almost exactly the same price:
| Price | Size | AED/sqft | |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-bed, Binghatti Aurora (April) | 1,399,998 | 730 sqft | 1,919 |
| Two-bed, Cappadocia (June) | 1,400,000 | 2,005 sqft | 698 |
Same outlay, same community, and one buyer got nearly three times as much floor area. On price alone they look identical. Per square foot, they are not close.
That does not make the larger unit the better buy. Newer buildings, amenities and finish all cost money, and AED/sqft cannot see any of them. What it does is make the difference visible, so you can ask what the extra cost per foot is buying.
The pattern most buyers get backwards
The common assumption is that bigger homes cost less per square foot. In Dubai apartments, the registered sales say the opposite:
| Apartment type | Median AED/sqft | Median price | Median size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Studio | 1,252 | 550,000 | 446 sqft |
| One-bed | 1,307 | 1,020,000 | 801 sqft |
| Two-bed | 1,497 | 1,950,000 | 1,293 sqft |
| Three-bed | 1,799 | 3,500,000 | 1,926 sqft |
Completed ready-sale apartment transactions, 12 months to 7 October 2026.
Across the city, a three-bed costs about 44% more per square foot than a studio. The reason is where they are, not their size: larger family apartments cluster in taller, higher-spec towers and pricier communities, and the price per foot follows them up.
Inside a single community the pattern can flip. In JVC, studios carry the highest rate of any apartment type. So a city-wide psf figure is a description of the whole market, never a yardstick for one home.
When AED/sqft works, and when it does not
It works when you compare like with like: the same building or community, the same bedroom count, a similar size, over a recent window.
It misleads when you compare across property types (an apartment and a villa), across very different communities, or across a mix that has changed. A community's average moves when the mix of what sold moves, even if no individual home changed in value. We showed that happening at city level in Dubai apartment prices rose 5%. Most communities did not.
Use it on any building
KhaleejKeys shows the median AED/sqft for every building and community, built from registered sales. Search any building from the home page, free and with no sign-up.
Source: DLD completed ready-sale transactions, 400,000+ records. Figures to 7 October 2026. This guide is general information, not investment advice.