Written by Amelia R. Lange
Uncertainty always puts a price on something. In the UAE this year, the thing being priced is conviction, sorting the owners looking for an exit from the buyers ready to take their place.
The regional turbulence earlier in 2026 shook Dubai's property market without breaking it. Buyers stepped back, apartment prices eased by roughly 3 percent, transaction volumes thinned by about a quarter, and a portion of investors, unnerved by the conflict, began shopping their UAE holdings around. Turbulence like that tends to pass, and while it lingers, it favors whoever is ready to act.
Lukas Kerrebijn, Co-Founder of RD Dubai, made sure his firm was ready.
The long-term picture for Dubai and the UAE looks similiar to the one that existed before the conflict. Untaxed rental and personal income, yields near 7 percent, deep liquidity, and a safe-haven reputation the market keeps restoring after each disruption still leave the region ahead of anything a foreign investor might weigh in Europe. That foundation is unchanged. Kerrebijn has always treated real estate as a patient pursuit, and against that timeframe the current disruption registers as a blip rather than a pivot. What comes next is tactical, and it operates within that steady thesis instead of overturning it.
Only the near-term playbook has shifted. The focus now falls on distressed and off-market deals, the kind where an owner will take less simply to be done. RD's own portfolio makes the case plainly. The firm paid 2.65 million dirhams for a Business Bay property a developer had first listed at 4.5 million, close to two million under the original figure, in an established Dubai district Kerrebijn had every reason to trust. He has said he would have gone to 3 or 3.2 million and still counted it a good buy. Landing it well below that owed everything to negotiation and relationships, nothing to luck.
Additionally, Kerrebijn has steered the firm away from undeveloped pockets and toward proven ones. An established area carries its value through a downturn because demand for it already exists, while a project on the fringe rests on a future a wary market can defer. When RD does step outside the core, it only does so at a price that pays for the extra risk. Location and cost decide the deal, not whether the building is finished. In the right place at the right entry point, an off-plan unit and a completed one can each stand up.
Abu Dhabi runs on the same thesis. After a 2025 marked by a sharp rise in transaction values, the capital's market has stayed conspicuously busy and RD leaned in. The firm has secured prime units in Sobha City, the developer's first master community in the emirate, at Al Bahiya.
A dislocated market simply handed Kerrebijn a cheaper route to a position he already wanted.
