I have seen this office market before

I started my real estate career in Dubai in 2008, at the peak of the previous property cycle. In the years that followed, the commercial market was full of strata offices — single floors and suites in Business Bay and Jumeirah Lake Towers, sold off-plan before 2008 to investors who had never owned a commercial property and never intended to manage one. Many of those buildings spent much of the following decade with high vacancy. By 2018, CBRE was describing high vacancy in Business Bay caused by over-development of strata buildings at the peak, and developers were converting unfinished office towers into homes and hotels.

I mention this because this year's office numbers look familiar.

What has happened this year

Office sales in the first nine months of 2026 reached AED 20.16 billion across 3,695 transactions, according to Dubai Land Department data analysed by Al Masdar Al Aqaari. Off-plan made up 80% of that value. In the first half alone, off-plan office sales of AED 13.1 billion were more than double the combined total for the previous seven years. Five developments accounted for 71.7% of the off-plan value, and Business Bay for around half of all office sales value.

At the same time, the leasing market has turned. Cushman & Wakefield recorded a 2% quarterly fall in average office rents in the second quarter, the first in nearly five years. The softening was in Grade B space, which is nearly 70% of the stock. Grade A buildings with a single owner held their rents.

Two different buyers

The occupiers are still here. Cushman & Wakefield reports no meaningful downsizing by global firms. They are cautious and delaying expansion, which is reasonable. Demand for good space from serious tenants is real, and it is much stronger than it was in 2011.

The buyers are a different story. A great deal of this year's off-plan office buying is residential investor behaviour moved into a new asset class: small deposits, long payment plans, and a plan to sell before completion. These buyers are buying strata units in buildings that will complete in the coming years — the segment where rents are already softening.

Strata and single-owned buildings do not lease the same way. A multinational looking for 20,000 sq ft wants one landlord, consistent management and room to grow in the same building. It rarely wants to negotiate with fifteen owners across four floors. Strata units serve smaller occupiers, and every unit competes with every other unit in the building, usually owned by an investor in a hurry.

That is the lesson of the last cycle. The office market did not fail in 2009 because demand vanished for good. It failed because the stock had been built and sold to the wrong owners.

What I am advising

Buy the tenant, not the tower. In commercial property the income is the asset. Before the building, I want to know who will occupy it, on what lease, at what rent, and what the service charge will be. A unit that only works at peak rent is not an investment.

If you buy strata, buy where you control something. A full floor in a well-managed building is a very different asset from a single suite. It can be let to one tenant, it can be marketed as a block, and it holds its value better when the market softens.

Look at ready, leased offices from motivated sellers. Some of this year's investors will want out before completion, and some owners of older strata offices will want to sell into the strong headline numbers. A ready unit with a sound tenant, bought on income, is a better proposition than a new launch priced on momentum.

If you are a business owner, this is a good time to think about owning your premises. Leverage has shifted slightly toward occupiers in secondary buildings, and owning removes rent risk at a time when Grade A rents are holding firm. Judge it on total occupancy cost over ten years, not on expected appreciation.

Avoid the crowded projects. When five developments account for more than 70% of a segment's sales, those buildings will have the most investors selling at completion and the most units competing for tenants.

I do not think 2026 is 2008 for offices. The occupier base is deeper, the economy is broader, and Grade A space is genuinely scarce. But the investors buying off-plan offices on payment plans this year are taking the same risk their predecessors took: that someone else will want the unit more than they do when it is finished. In my experience, that is a bet worth making only at the right price, in the right building, with a tenant in mind.

Sources

• —Dubai Land Department data analysed by Al Masdar Al Aqaari, via Travels Dubai and Khaleej Times
• —Cushman & Wakefield, MarketBeat Office Q2 2026
• —CBRE on Business Bay strata oversupply, via Gulf News (2018)
• —Cover photo: Nelemson Guevarra on Unsplash