DXB Interact Guide: How to Use Dubai's Free Property Data

DXB Interact is the most valuable free tool available to anyone buying, selling or investing in Dubai property, and most buyers have never opened it. This is how to use it.

What it is

A free platform providing public access to Dubai Land Department transaction records — actual registered sale prices, searchable and filterable, with price-per-square-foot analysis, trend charts and area comparisons. It is available as a website and a mobile app.

It was built and is operated by the team behind fäm Properties, with Firas Al Msaddi identified as CEO of both (see Article 53). It is free to use.

The significance: in most property markets, transaction data is private, guarded or expensive. Dubai publishes it, and DXB Interact makes it usable. This means information asymmetry in Dubai is optional. You can check almost any claim an agent makes, for free, in an afternoon.

The five things it tells you

1. What properties actually sold for — not asking prices, but registered transactions with dates, prices and areas.

2. Price per square foot by building — the single most important comparison metric.

3. Transaction volumes — how many units traded, which tells you about liquidity.

4. Trends over time — whether a building or community is appreciating, flat or falling.

5. Off-plan versus ready splits — the composition of activity in an area.

How to use it: six practical workflows

Workflow 1 — Check whether an asking price is reasonable

1. 1Filter to the specific building.
2. 2Set the date range to the last six to twelve months.
3. 3Filter to the same unit type (bedroom count).
4. 4Note the price-per-square-foot range of actual sales.
5. 5Compare the asking price per square foot against that range.

If the asking price sits more than 10% above recent achieved prices, there is either a reason you should identify — a superior floor, view or renovation — or the price is aspirational.

This takes five minutes and it is the difference between negotiating from evidence and negotiating from feeling.

Workflow 2 — Verify an agent's yield claim

An agent quotes a 7.5% yield. Check:

1. 1Actual recent sale prices in that building (DXB Interact).
2. 2Actual rental listings in that building (Property Finder, Bayut).
3. 3The RERA-approved service charge (Dubai REST).

Compute the yield yourself. It is almost always lower than quoted, because quoted yields are gross, use asking rents rather than achieved rents, and ignore service charges.

Workflow 3 — Assess a developer

This is the highest-value use of the tool.

1. 1Identify a project the developer completed three to four years ago.
2. 2Pull current transaction prices in that building.
3. 3Compare to the original launch price for that project.

Trading above launch: the developer's product holds value and carries a brand premium in resale. Trading below launch: buyers in that building lost money. Find out why before repeating the exercise.

Run this for two or three of their completed projects to establish a pattern. Fifteen minutes, free, and more predictive of your outcome than any brochure.

Workflow 4 — Assess liquidity

Count transactions in your target building over the last twelve months.

Fewer than four or five sales a year in a building means thin liquidity. When you come to sell, you may wait months and take a price set by the absence of alternatives.

High transaction counts mean an active market with visible comparables — which cuts both ways, but generally favours the seller who needs to exit.

Workflow 5 — Spot mispricing

Compare price per square foot across buildings in the same community. Buildings frequently differ by 20–30%.

Some of that gap is justified — build quality, service charge levels, developer reputation, amenity, view.

Some of it is not, and represents either an opportunity or a warning. Investigate before concluding which.

Workflow 6 — Track a community's direction

Chart median price per square foot in a community over eight quarters.

Rising volume with rising prices: healthy expansion. Falling volume with flat prices: early warning — liquidity deteriorates before price does. Rising volume with falling prices: distribution; sellers are exiting.

How to read the data correctly

Built-up versus net area. Confirm which the recorded area represents. It changes your price-per-square-foot calculation materially and is a frequent source of error.

Off-plan versus ready. Off-plan transactions record at the contract price, which may be years old and does not reflect current market. Filter them separately — off-plan traded at roughly a 20% per-square-foot premium to ready in Q1 2026, so blending them distorts everything.

Registration lag. DLD registration follows the agreement by weeks. Very recent data may be incomplete.

Outliers. A single unusual transaction — a distressed sale, a family transfer at nominal value, a bulk purchase — can distort a small sample. Look at the distribution, not the average, when transaction counts are low.

Unit specifics. Two identical-size apartments in the same building can differ 25% on price for floor, view, orientation and condition. The data gives you a range, not a valuation.

The complementary free tools

Dubai REST app (DLD official) — title deed verification, property details, RERA rental index, RERA service charge index, broker card verification, and transaction history.

RERA Service Charge Index — approved annual charges by project.

RERA Rental Index — market rent bands used to determine permitted increases.

DLD Property Price Index — official price tracking.

Consultancy research — CBRE, JLL, Knight Frank, ValuStrat, Cavendish Maxwell, Asteco quarterly reports, generally free.

Used together, these five tools give an individual buyer in Dubai better information than institutional investors have in most emerging markets.

Why so few people use it

Because it requires an hour of work and no one is paid to tell you about it.

Every actor in the transaction chain earns on completion. None of them earns from you spending an afternoon establishing that the asking price is 12% above recent comparables.

That is precisely why doing it is worth so much.

The five-minute discipline

Before any Dubai property viewing:

1. 1Building name into DXB Interact.
2. 2Last twelve months, same unit type.
3. 3Note the price-per-square-foot range.
4. 4Service charge from the RERA index.
5. 5Count active rental and sale listings in the building.

Five minutes. It will change how you conduct the viewing, and it will occasionally save you from attending at all.