Methodology
How we build our Dubai property data
Every price, trend and track record on HomeSearch traces back to official records. Here's exactly where our data comes from, how we clean and check it, and what it can and can't tell you.
Our commitment
Numbers you can trace all the way back to their source.
A property figure is only useful if you can trust where it came from. That's why HomeSearch is built on Dubai's public transaction record rather than on listings, estimates or agent opinion, and why we show our working instead of asking you to take a number on faith.
This page documents that process end to end. If a figure on the site can't be traced back through these steps to a real Dubai Land Department record, it doesn't belong here.
Where our data comes from
Official sources first: no scraped listings, no asking prices.
Dubai Land Department (DLD)
Every registered sale and lease in Dubai. This is the backbone of our pricing: real transaction values, dates, areas, property types and sizes, not asking prices or listings.
RERA licensing records
The Real Estate Regulatory Agency register tells us which agencies and brokers are licensed, and links each agent to their official broker (BRN) number.
Computed market trends
We derive medians, price-per-sqft and 12-month trends ourselves from the raw DLD deals, grouped by building, community and property type, so every trend traces back to real closings.
Why the source matters
Asking prices tell you what a seller hopes to get. Registered transactions tell you what a buyer actually paid. We only build trends on the second kind, so the numbers reflect the real market rather than the one in the brochure.
How we verify it
The five steps every figure passes through before it reaches a page.
- 1
Ingest the latest deals
Each day we take the newest transactions registered with the DLD and load them into our database, keyed to the building, community and developer they belong to.
- 2
Match & group
Deals are grouped by building, community, property type and bedroom count so a price only ever gets compared with genuinely like-for-like homes.
- 3
Remove outliers
Bulk transfers, related-party sales and data-entry errors distort a trend. Where a figure sits far outside the pattern for its group, we hold it back rather than let it skew the median.
- 4
Compute the figures
We calculate medians and price-per-sqft on the cleaned set, and roll each agent's and agency's real deal count and value up from their registered transactions.
- 5
Refresh & version
Trends update as new deals register, and each page shows when its data was last refreshed so you always know how current a figure is.
How we present prices
Median-first, always shown with the sample it rests on.
We lead with the median rather than the average, because a handful of very high or very low deals can pull an average away from what most homes actually trade at. The median is the middle of the market.
Where it helps, we show a range and the price per square foot so you can compare fairly across different sizes, and we always show the sample a figure rests on. A trend built on three deals is not the same as one built on three hundred, and we don't pretend it is.
What our data can't do
Honest limits, so you know when to get a professional in.
A trend is not a valuation
Our figures show how a building or community has traded. They can't account for a specific unit's floor, view, condition or upgrades. For a price on one home, get a RERA-certified valuation.
Registration takes time
Deals appear once they're registered with the DLD, which can lag the handshake by days or weeks. The very newest activity in a hot building may not be fully reflected yet.
Corrections
See something off? Tell us and we'll check it against the record.
Spotted something wrong?
Every page has a report link, and a person reads what comes in. If a figure looks wrong we hold it back until we can check it against the DLD record, and we note when a page was last updated. You can also reach the team any time through our contact page.
See the data for yourself
Browse real Dubai transactions, community price trends and licensed agent records, all built on the process above.