Dubai, UAE — Dubai Holding Real Estate signed a home financing partnership with Commercial Bank of Dubai on June 10. It is the third arrangement of its kind the group has reached since April. In mid-April, Dubai Holding Real Estate and Emirates NBD signed a memorandum of understanding for integrated off-plan mortgage financing across Meraas, Nakheel and Dubai Properties. In May, Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank and DAMAC Properties launched a separate plan offering financing of up to 85 percent of property value.
Three deals, two developer groups, two months. Off-plan mortgage financing, once a product buyers chased down near handover, is becoming something developers build into the sale itself.
How Off-Plan Mortgage Financing Moved to the 30% Mark
The CBD programme lets eligible buyers access financing once a project reaches 30 percent construction progress, provided they have met a 50 percent payment threshold. It covers conventional and Islamic financing, at fixed and variable rates, with digital pre-approval meant to give buyers early clarity on borrowing capacity.
Khalid Al Malik, Chief Executive Officer of Dubai Holding Real Estate, framed the deal around timing: “Enabling access to home ownership at the right point in the purchase journey is a priority for Dubai Holding Real Estate. Our partnership with Commercial Bank of Dubai responds directly to that need by unlocking earlier and more structured access to home financing across Nakheel, Meraas and Dubai Properties.”
Dr. Bernd van Linder, CBD’s Chief Executive Officer, pointed to what buyers have been asking for: “Customers today want more than financing. They want clarity, efficiency and trusted guidance throughout the property ownership journey.”
Moving the financing trigger from handover to 30 percent construction shifts risk earlier in the build cycle, for the bank and for the buyer. It also gives the developer a financed buyer locked in earlier, at a point in its own cash flow where that matters.
Mortgage Values Jumped 46% While Cash Still Wins Resales
The timing lines up with the lending data. Dubai recorded 11,829 mortgage transactions in the first quarter of 2026, up 7.5 percent year on year, worth a combined AED 59.8 billion, a 46 percent jump in value. Average loan size rose by roughly a third.
Cash still leads in resales: 67 percent of resale transactions in the quarter were cash, against 33 percent mortgage-backed. That split has held for years, and Dubai’s headline transaction value growth has continued to lean on buyers who do not need a bank.
Set against 2025, the picture sharpens further. Full-year mortgage sales totalled AED 179 billion, down 4 percent even as the number of mortgage deals rose 23 percent to roughly 51,000. The average loan-to-value ratio fell to about 73 percent, more than 5 percentage points below the year before.
More loans, smaller average exposure, lower leverage per loan. That is not a market where banks were chasing volume by loosening standards. It is one where mortgage activity grew at the edges while cash carried the centre.
Banks Are Wary Even as Developers Lean In
That is the tension sitting underneath this week’s announcement. Developers are extending financing earlier into construction at the same time banks have been pulling back their exposure per loan. AGBI’s reporting on valuations found banks holding firm on appraisals while growing more cautious about lending against them.
Three partnerships in two months suggest developers see a gap worth filling: salaried and self-employed UAE residents who want to buy off-plan but have been priced out of the cash-dominated segment, or have been unable to secure financing early enough to compete for units. Dubai’s first-time buyer programme already points to the size of that pool. More than 3,200 residents have bought homes through it since July 2025, across deals worth over AED 5 billion, with 22 developers and five banks participating.
Whether the new programmes scale depends on whether banks extend that appetite to a broader off-plan book, where construction and delivery risk sit for longer before a unit produces any income. If valuations stay firm but underwriting stays tight, these programmes may multiply in number without growing much in size.
What the Financing Push Means for NRI and Resident Investors
For resident end-users, particularly salaried professionals who have sat out the off-plan market because financing only arrived near handover, these programmes remove a real barrier. Earlier financing certainty changes which units a buyer can realistically commit to, and when.
For Indian and NRI investors, who typically transact in cash because of currency considerations and remittance limits under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme, none of the three off-plan mortgage financing programmes change how they buy. The relevance is indirect. Nakheel, Meraas and Dubai Properties cover communities such as JVC, Dubailand and MBR City, where NRI investors often hold units for rental income rather than personal use. If financed resident demand grows in those communities, it adds a second source of occupier demand alongside cash-investor-driven supply. That matters for rental yield sustainability over the coming quarters, provided the bank lending question above resolves in developers’ favour.
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