Across the Gulf, the 2026 base case is a soft landing rather than a crash. The region enters the year worth roughly USD 141 billion, with the UAE holding about 61% of it, transitioning from boom to disciplined maturity. But the spread between forecasters is unusually wide, and that spread is the most useful thing to understand.
Dubai: the widest spread in the Gulf
No market splits opinion like Dubai. Fitch models a correction of up to 15%; ValuStrat projects about 10% growth; Knight Frank lands near 1 to 3%; Cushman & Wakefield sees 5 to 8%. The balance of opinion is mid-single-digit moderation, with villa and luxury resilience against mid-market apartment vulnerability.
Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Oman: still climbing
The capital looks tighter than Dubai. Cushman & Wakefield Core expects Abu Dhabi price and rental growth of 8 to 12% in 2026 on only about 6,500 new units. Saudi Arabia is opening to foreign buyers with Riyadh sales up 63% year on year in H1 2025. Oman's residential index rose 18.7% year on year in Q3 2025, the fastest in the Gulf.
The risks and the supports
The dominant risks are Dubai's supply wave, affordability gaps as prices outpace wages, and geopolitical shocks. The dominant supports are population growth, around 5% UAE GDP growth, HNWI inflows, zero income and capital-gains tax, and the Golden Visa.
Treat any single point forecast cautiously. The defensible view is a range with luxury resilience at one end and mid-market apartment risk at the other.
Alpen Capital projects GCC residential supply rising from about 6.26 million units in 2025 to 7.28 million by 2030, led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The watch items are clear: if Dubai's actual 2026 handovers exceed roughly 60,000 units, oversupply coverage escalates; if Saudi zone maps publish restrictively, the opening optimism cools.