Dubai Real Estate Boom: What Investors Expect for Property Prices This Year

Sixty-nine percent of more than 5,000 investors surveyed expect Dubai property prices to keep rising, according to the inaugural results from StakePredict, a real estate prediction market launched in June by the digital investment platform Stake.

The findings land at a telling moment. Dubai’s property market closed the first quarter of 2026 at one of the highest performance benchmarks on record, and investors appear to view that result not as a ceiling but as a floor.

The survey, conducted through StakePredict, captured expectations across multiple dimensions of Dubai’s property landscape. Nearly half of participants, 49 percent, anticipate that transaction volumes could increase beyond the record levels set in Q1, a striking projection given how elevated the benchmark already stands. Sixty-one percent expect luxury-sector transaction activity to remain at or exceed those first-quarter levels, signaling that high-end properties continue to attract purchasing power.

StakePredict functions as a structured prediction market: participants forecast trends, then compare their calls against verified market outcomes once the data is in. Stake describes this mechanism as a new layer of transparency around how investors read the market and how their expectations shift over time. The platform serves investors across the Middle East and North Africa region and is accessible through the Stake mobile application.

Rami Tabbara, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Stake, pointed to the timing as what makes the results meaningful. “Dubai real estate entered 2026 with an exceptionally strong first quarter, setting a high benchmark for the rest of the year,” he said. “Despite this, and despite broader global uncertainty, investors continue to show confidence in the strength and resilience of the market.”

Tabbara also described the platform’s core purpose. “By measuring expectations and comparing them with verified market outcomes, we are creating a new layer of transparency around investor confidence and behaviour,” he explained.

What distinguishes StakePredict from conventional surveys is the accountability built into the format. Investors put their expectations on record and later measure their accuracy against actual data, rather than simply responding to a questionnaire with no follow-up.

Meanwhile, the platform is already looking ahead. The next survey is scheduled for mid-August, asking investors to forecast key trends expected to shape the third quarter. Participants will be able to track how sentiment shifts between rounds and compare individual predictions with verified results.

Whether the market can sustain momentum through the second half of 2026, and whether investor expectations prove accurate when measured against Q3 data, is the open question the August survey will begin to answer.