Dubai’s ultra-prime apartment market is small enough to count by hand and public enough to check. Every sale is registered with the Land Department, and the register says what was actually paid — not what an agency announced.
Over the last 24 months 231 apartments changed hands above 50 million dirhams. For scale: in 2019 there were four such sales in the whole year, in 2020 exactly one.
The largest apartment sales on record
| Building | Area | Beds | Size, m² | Price, AED | Deal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aman Residences Dubai - Tower 2 | Jumeirah Second | 6 B/R | 2 899 | 422 000 000 | 2026-03 |
| Aman Residences Dubai - Tower 1 | Jumeirah Second | 6 B/R | 2 899 | 356 232 500 | 2026-03 |
| ONE AT PALM JUMEIRAH | Palm Jumeirah | 5 B/R | 2 945 | 275 000 000 | 2024-09 |
| The Alba Residences | Palm Jumeirah | 6 B/R | 2 916 | 225 965 000 | 2026-02 |
| Peninsula Dubai Residences - Tower 2 | Jumeirah Second | 5 B/R | 2 026 | 210 000 000 | 2026-02 |
| Jumeirah Residences Asora Bay | Jumeirah First | 6 B/R | 2 372 | 203 030 000 | 2025-11 |
| Bugatti Residences by Binghatti | Business Bay | 5 B/R | 1 897 | 200 000 000 | 2026-06 |
| Aman Residences Dubai - Tower 1 | Jumeirah Second | 5 B/R | 931 | 173 640 867 | 2025-07 |
| Aman Residences Dubai - Tower 2 | Jumeirah Second | 5 B/R | 931 | 171 036 254 | 2026-04 |
| Peninsula Dubai Residences - Tower 1 | Jumeirah Second | 5 B/R | 2 101 | 170 000 000 | 2025-06 |
| Aman Residences Dubai - Tower 1 | Jumeirah Second | 5 B/R | 931 | 167 754 736 | 2025-07 |
| Aman Residences Dubai - Tower 2 | Jumeirah Second | 5 B/R | 931 | 166 077 188 | 2026-07 |
| Jumeirah Residences Asora Bay | Jumeirah First | 6 B/R | 1 689 | 163 881 000 | 2025-05 |
| BULGARI Lighthouse Dubai | Island 2 | 5 B/R | 1 083 | 155 800 000 | 2025-04 |
| BULGARI Lighthouse Dubai | Island 2 | 5 B/R | 1 083 | 155 000 000 | 2025-10 |
| BULGARI Lighthouse Dubai | Island 2 | 5 B/R | 1 083 | 146 600 000 | 2025-06 |
| Aman Residences Dubai - Tower 1 | Jumeirah Second | 4 B/R | 799 | 144 764 122 | 2025-12 |
| Jumeirah Residences Asora Bay | Jumeirah First | 5 B/R | 1 768 | 143 620 000 | 2025-05 |
| Private Residences Dubai | Jumeirah Second | 4 B/R | 877 | 140 000 000 | 2025-04 |
| BULGARI Lighthouse Dubai | Island 2 | 5 B/R | 1 083 | 136 250 000 | 2025-06 |
Residential apartment transactions over the last 24 months, Dubai Land Department data. Updated weekly. All-time register record — AED 500 000 000 (Como Residences, 2023).
The most expensive metre is not on Palm Jumeirah
Palm Jumeirah leads on volume — 87 of those 231 sales. But per square metre it is second: an average of 85,000 dirhams against 132,000 in Jumeirah Second, the strip around Aman and Peninsula. Jumeirah First sits at 88,000, Island 2 at 117,000, Burj Khalifa at 60,000.
The reading is straightforward. The Palm sells space: large floor plates, sea on both sides, an established address. Jumeirah Second sells scarcity — a handful of branded towers with very few units each, where the price is set by how little there is rather than by how much you get.
How the market got here
Sales above 50 million dirhams, by year of registration: four in 2019, one in 2020, four in 2021, then 37 in 2022, 127 in 2023, 75 in 2024, 126 in 2025 and 77 in the first eight months of 2026.
The step change lands in 2022, not 2021. That is the year branded residences arrived in volume — and the segment stopped being a handful of penthouses in older towers.
Why the register’s biggest number is not the answer
Sorting the register by price alone produces nonsense. The top row is a 1.52 billion dirham transaction on Nakheel Mall with a recorded area of 498,567 square metres: a shopping centre, filed under the same property type as a flat. Below it sit hotels and retail floors.
There is a subtler trap. One 2010 record shows 659.7 million dirhams for 298 square metres in Elite Residence — 2.2 million per square metre, when the entire ultra-prime market runs between 73,000 and 245,000. That is a bulk registration booked against a single unit, not a penthouse sale.
So the table above filters to residential flats of 200–3,000 square metres with a plausible price per metre. The all-time record that survives those filters is Como Residences on Palm Jumeirah: 500 million dirhams for 2,039 square metres in 2023 — 245,000 per metre, the highest verified rate in the register.
What this means if you are buying
At this level there is no market price, only comparable transactions — and there are few of them. Before an offer it is worth seeing every registered sale in the building, the spread between them and how long the gap between deals has been. We pull that from the register for a specific tower on request.