The Dubai investor visa, through property

The investor visa is the residence visa Dubai gives the owner of a home here: two years, renewable for as long as the home is held, with a spouse and children sponsored on it, issued by the immigration authority on an application the Dubai Land Department makes for you. For years the price of entry was a fixed figure, AED 1,000,000 and then AED 750,000, and most pages that answer the question still print it. In April 2026 the department removed it. A person who owns a Dubai property alone may now apply whatever it cost, and where a property is owned jointly each owner needs a registered share worth AED 400,000 or more. What follows is the visa as the department's own e-service page for it, the investor residence application it calls Taskeen, describes it on 15 September 2026, the day this page was written, and every fee below is that page's, or its sister pages' for the retirement and Golden visas: who qualifies, what it charges, how the application runs, what the visa gives and does not, the retirement visa that sits beside it for buyers over fifty-five, the ten-year Golden Visa above both, and, from the sales register, what a home that carries the visa actually sells for in every community the register can price.

Who qualifies

The deed. The visa rests on a title deed from the Dubai Land Department in the applicant's name, which means a completed home in an area a foreign national can own; the freehold areas page lists them from the department's own flag. A home still under construction holds an Oqood rather than a deed and waits for handover; property in the DIFC, which keeps its own land registry, and property in another emirate are outside the scheme. The department's page names no property type, and in practice the desk deals in homes.

The value. Since April 2026, none for a sole owner: the department's service page says the owner of a property is allowed to apply for a residency visa regardless of the property's value. For a jointly owned property each co-owner's share has to be worth AED 400,000 or more, so a couple buying half and half need a home of AED 800,000 between them, three owners one of AED 1,200,000, and a small share of an expensive home does not carry a visa on its own. The change was published on the department's Cube Centre platform and reported on 29 April 2026 with no decree behind it, so it is the desk's rule rather than a law's, and the desk can change it again the same way. Until then the line was AED 750,000, and before 2022 AED 1,000,000; a page that still prints either is describing the visa as it was.

A mortgage. A mortgaged home qualifies with the bank's no-objection letter, which states what has been paid and what is owed; a home bought on a developer's payment plan takes the developer's statement instead. How much has to have been paid is the one condition the department's page does not state: the guidance reported when the minimum went put it at half the value or AED 375,000, whichever is more, so treat that as the desk's practice and ask before you apply.

The person. Any nationality that can own in Dubai, which in the freehold areas is any nationality. A good-conduct certificate from Dubai Police, addressed to the Land Department, which the Golden Visa does not ask for; a resident gets it through the police app, a visitor at a police station. Health insurance, which every Dubai residence visa requires, and the medical fitness test every residence visa requires. The applicant attends in person; the department does not take representatives.

What the visa gives

• Residence in the UAE for two years, renewable while the home is held, with no employer and no local sponsor
• An Emirates ID, and with it what residence unlocks: a bank account on ordinary terms, a UAE driving licence, a phone contract, a school place
• Sponsorship of a spouse and children on the same file, and parents for a year at a time, each on the department's schedule below
• Days that count toward a UAE tax residency certificate, which as the rule stands asks for 183 in the year, or 90 with a home and a residence permit here; what the certificate is worth is a question for an adviser at home, since it is the other country's rules that decide

And what it does not. It is a residence visa, not a work permit: taking a job means the employer obtains a work permit for you, which is routine for someone who holds their own residence but is a separate step. And unlike the Golden Visa it carries the ordinary six-month rule: a residence visa lapses if its holder stays outside the country for more than 180 days at a stretch, so an owner who lives abroad and visits needs to count the days.

What it costs

The department's fees, as its e-service page printed them on the day this page was written, 15 September 2026; the department's schedule on the day you apply is the last word, and it changes without notice:

The department prints one figure for the holder rather than a breakdown; on its retiree and Golden Visa pages the equivalent figure is the medical test, the Emirates ID, the residence permit, the department's fee and an administrative fee added together, so read it as the whole government bill for the holder. The Cube Centre, which processes the application, quotes AED 10,545 for a new visa and AED 8,215 for a renewal, the difference being its own service charges. On top come the good-conduct certificate, the health insurance for the term, and the purchase's own costs, which are in the cost of buying: the 4% transfer fee alone on an AED 800,000 home is AED 32,000, three times the visa.

One oddity is worth knowing. The two-year visa costs more than the ten-year one: the department's Golden Visa page totals AED 9,884.75 for ten years' residence against AED 10,212.50 for two, and the two-year visa comes round five times as often. A buyer whose budget is anywhere near the AED 2,000,000 line should read the Golden Visa page before choosing.

How to apply

• Complete the purchase and take the deed in your own name; the visa is applied for on the deed, not on the contract
• Get the good-conduct certificate from Dubai Police, addressed to the Dubai Land Department, and a health insurance policy for the term
• Apply through the department, at its Cube Centre, the residence-visa desk at its headquarters in Deira, run for it by a service partner, or online through its Taskeen service, with the passport (six months' validity), the electronic deed, a photograph to the immigration authority's specification, the current visa or entry stamp, the Emirates ID if you already hold one, and the bank's or developer's letter if the home is not paid off
• The department checks the deed and passes the file to the immigration authority; an entry permit issues if you are outside the country, a change of status if you are inside it
• The medical fitness test and the Emirates ID biometrics, at their own centres
• The residence permit issues electronically and is linked to the Emirates ID; there has been no visa sticker in the passport since 2022

The department quotes seven to ten business days for a complete file; the Cube's own guidance says ten to fifteen working days, which is the honest range.

Renewing it, and keeping it

Every two years, on the same basis: the home still in your name, the good-conduct certificate and the insurance again, the medical again, and the renewal fee, which the Cube quotes at AED 8,215. The visa rests on the deed, so selling the home removes its basis and the visa is cancelled with the sale; whether a replacement home carries it over is a question to ask the desk before the sale rather than after. Letting the home out does not affect the visa. A family member's visa follows the holder's: when the holder's ends, theirs does too.

Sponsoring the family

Who and for how long, from the department's own schedule: a spouse for two years, children under eighteen for two years, a daughter over eighteen for two years while unmarried (with a certificate of her status from Dubai Courts), a son over eighteen for one year at a time, and parents for one year at a time with a dependency certificate from your consulate and three months of bank statements. What each costs is in the table above, plus AED 318.75 once to open the file. The paperwork: the marriage certificate and the children's birth certificates, attested for use in the UAE, the sponsor's passport and Emirates ID, photographs, a bank IBAN, and for a mother sponsoring, a notarised no-objection letter from the father.

The retirement visa, through property

Five years, renewable, for a buyer aged fifty-five or over, through the same department. The property route: a home, or several between them, bought for AED 1,000,000 or more, paid in full and unmortgaged, or, if mortgaged, with AED 1,000,000 of it paid and a bank letter saying so; a married couple may share one property with the marriage certificate. A spouse and children are sponsored on it. The fees on the department's retiree e-service page on the day this page was written, 15 September 2026: AED 6,984.75 for the holder, which is the medical at AED 700, the Emirates ID at AED 653, the five-year permit at AED 2,456.75, the department's fee at AED 2,020 and an administrative fee at AED 1,155; AED 4,968.50 for a family member's five-year permit, plus AED 318.75 to open the file; seven to ten business days. The immigration authority's own retirement programme accepts savings or an income instead of property, on its own figures. For a buyer over fifty-five the arithmetic is simple: at AED 1,000,000 the home carries five years' residence for less than the investor visa's two. Whether a home clears the million is in the tables below; two in three of last year's completed resales did.

What a home that carries the visa sells for

The Dubai Land Department records every sale in the emirate, and this site reads that register nightly. In the twelve months to 11 September 2026 it recorded 45,037 resales of completed homes, off-plan sales kept apart as they are everywhere on this site, at a median of AED 1,450,000. Since the floor went, the question is not whether a home qualifies but what a home costs where you want one; the two lines that still matter are AED 800,000, what a couple buying together need so that each share clears AED 400,000, and AED 1,000,000, the retirement visa's. By layout:

A studio is the home the old AED 750,000 line kept out and the new rule lets in: 7,909 resold last year at a median of AED 560,000, and only one in six reached AED 800,000. A one-bedroom clears a couple's AED 800,000 three times in four and the retirement line a little more than half the time; anything larger clears both almost always.

By community, cheapest first: every published community with twenty or more completed resales in the year and a median under the Golden Visa's AED 2,000,000, the ground this visa was built for, each linking its guide. Read the two right-hand columns as what a couple's two shares and a retiree's million buy: in International City fewer than one home in ten reached AED 800,000, in Motor City nearly nine in ten.

Thirty-nine more communities the register can price have a median at or above AED 2,000,000, from Dubai Marina at AED 2,100,000 to Nad Al Sheba at AED 15,742,000; the typical home there is a Golden Visa purchase, and the reports page ranks them all. A visa rests only on a home a foreign national can own. Most of the communities above read fully freehold on the department's flag; four whose areas read mostly not, Al Barsha, Al Jaddaf, Culture Village and Maritime City, are left out, and where an area is only partly freehold, Al Quoz, Dubai Internet City, Mirdif and Al Satwa among them, the register's median mixes homes a foreigner can buy with homes only a citizen can, so check the building's own designation on the freehold areas page before counting on it.

Where to start

With the home. A home bought because it is the right home, that carries residence with it, is the way the scheme is meant to work, and since April 2026 any home a sole owner can take a deed on does. The cheapest areas page ranks the communities above by what a home costs; what McCone has for sale under AED 2,000,000 is one click away; the cost of buying is on top of the price, buying as a foreigner is the purchase from abroad, and the mortgage brokers page says what a non-resident can borrow for it, remembering that the bank's letter then joins the visa file.