Dubai’s property market draws buyers from across the world, yet the reasons they come are rarely the same. Behind the headline figures sits a more interesting story: distinct communities, each responding to its own circumstances at home, arriving at one city for entirely separate motives. The pattern set through 2025 has carried into 2026, and understanding who buys, and why, says a good deal about where the market is heading — and why it has proved so difficult to unsettle.
India — the largest single source
Indian buyers accounted for around 22 per cent of purchases in 2025, the largest share of any nationality, and the reasons are long-standing rather than sudden. Dubai is home to an Indian expatriate community estimated at some 3.5 million, and the cultural, commercial and family ties between the two run deep. A short flight, a familiar business culture and the strength of rupee purchasing power at the upper end all make the city feel less like a foreign market than a natural extension of home. For many Indian families the question is not whether to look at Dubai, but which part of it to settle in — a measure of how established the relationship has become.
United Kingdom — a reassessment underway
British buyers made up roughly 17 per cent of the market, and the figure has been sharpened by change at home. The abolition of the United Kingdom’s non-domiciled tax regime in April 2025 has prompted a good number of high-net-worth individuals to reconsider where they reside and where they hold their wealth. Dubai, with its long-standing British community, direct flight connections and absence of personal income tax, has become an obvious point of comparison. For some the interest is residential and immediate; for others it is a more measured question of where a family’s affairs are best based for the years ahead.
China — diversification abroad
Chinese buyers represented about 14 per cent of purchases, and much of this demand reflects caution at home rather than exuberance. A weak domestic property sector, and the lingering memory of the Evergrande era, have encouraged families to spread their holdings beyond China’s borders. Dubai offers a tangible, income-producing asset held in a stable currency, in a jurisdiction widely seen as neutral and accessible. For a household seeking to protect capital rather than chase a return, that combination is quietly persuasive. The motivation is preservation more than ambition, and Dubai reads that need well.
Saudi Arabia — a rising neighbour
Saudi buyers accounted for close to 11 per cent, and their share has been climbing. Proximity is a large part of it: the Kingdom is near enough for regular visits, weekend stays and second homes used in earnest rather than left to sit empty. Cultural familiarity and close regional ties make Dubai a comfortable choice, whether as a lifestyle base, a place for family to gather, or one holding within a broader Gulf portfolio. The relationship is neighbourly in the most literal sense.
Russia — steady demand
Russian buyers made up around 9 per cent of the market. For this community Dubai offers stability, personal safety and a currency-secure home for capital, along with the connectivity and year-round lifestyle that have made it a fixture of international demand. Their presence has been consistent rather than sudden, adding to the city’s balance. Alongside these five nationalities, Dubai continues to attract notable interest from across Europe, the CIS and the wider MENA region — a breadth of demand that keeps any single source from defining the whole.
Taken together, these five nationalities account for a little over seven in every ten purchases, yet no one of them holds the market to itself. It is a spread that lends the city a certain steadiness: when one source slows, another tends to be arriving, and the whole rarely moves in a single direction at once.
The threads they share
However different their starting points, these buyers are drawn by a common set of qualities that few other cities manage to combine at once:
- No personal tax — the absence of income and capital gains tax on individuals.
- Residency — the Golden Visa, which grants a ten-year renewable residence to a family on a qualifying property investment of AED 2 million.
- Safety — a reputation for personal security that matters a great deal to families relocating with children.
- Stability — a dirham pegged to the US dollar, which removes much of the currency risk that unsettles buyers elsewhere.
- Connectivity — an international airport and a location within a few hours’ flight of much of the world.
What emerges is less a single market than several running in parallel. An Indian family extending a life it already knows; a British professional reassessing where wealth should sit; a Chinese household seeking ballast abroad; a Saudi buyer a short drive from home; a Russian owner valuing stability — each arrives for its own reasons, and together they lend the market a resilience that no single source could provide on its own.
At ArshaHomes we read these currents quietly, and help each buyer find the home that answers their own reason for coming.
