Motor City Offices: Prices, Rents and a Doubling Pipeline

Motor City offices are the cheapest mainstream office space in Dubai’s registry, at a median registered rent of AED 94.5 per sq ft, and they are reasonably well let. Prices have tripled since 2023. The thing a buyer needs to know is what comes next: 362 new office units are registered for delivery here, against roughly 354 units in the buildings that carry the district’s entire leasing record. Motor City is about to double its office stock, on a pipeline 43 times the Dubai-wide ratio.

Motor City offices: the short answer

The district works. Rents recovered 62% from their 2021 low, prices tripled from 2023, and about 80% of its office units carry an active registered lease, which places it ninth of 39 Dubai submarkets on the same measure, above the 75.5% median.

The risk is not demand. It is arithmetic. Almost as much new office space is registered for delivery as exists today, and buyers are currently paying more for units that do not exist yet than for units they can walk into.

The three buildings that are the market

All 2,301 registered office leases in Motor City sit in one of three buildings.

Building	Completed	Leases on record	Median unit	Median rent per sq ft
Detroit House	2010	1,178	1,091 sq ft	AED 65.3
Apex Atrium	2010	648	1,164 sq ft	AED 93.5
Control Tower	2009	475	3,329 sq ft	AED 75.2

Sales are more concentrated still. Since 2024 every registered ready office sale happened in two of them: Control Tower, 75, and Detroit House, 33. So when this article says “Motor City offices”, it means these buildings.

One thing that table does not show is a shortage of large space. Control Tower’s median unit is 3,329 sq ft, and across the three buildings 35% of units are 1,963 sq ft or larger. Those larger units hold 68% of all leased floor area in the district.

Motor City office prices: ready and off-plan

Ready offices, measured on registered transactions, have moved like this:

Year	Median AED per sq ft	Transactions
2023	555	95
2024	950	68
2025	1,064	30
2026 to July	1,551	10

That is a 179% rise. It is also a rise measured on a shrinking sample: the 2026 median rests on ten sales, against 95 in 2023. Treat the direction as real and the latest level as directional.

Split by building, over 2024 to 2026 Control Tower recorded 75 ready sales at a median of AED 950 per sq ft and Detroit House 33 at AED 856. In 2026 Control Tower reached AED 1,659 across nine sales.

Off-plan is where the money has gone. Capital One, in Al Hebiah First and due 2027, recorded 269 sales in 2025 at a median of AED 1,830 per sq ft. Monarch, due 2026, recorded 22 at AED 1,501. Both rose in 2026, to AED 2,051 and AED 1,850, on counts of only three and eight.

So buyers are paying more for an office that does not exist yet than for one they can walk into today. That is normal in Dubai. It is worth knowing you are doing it.

Motor City office rent: the cheapest mainstream office space in Dubai

Rents bottomed in 2021 and have climbed since.

Year	Median AED per sq ft	Contracts
2021	59.0	189
2023	64.4	236
2024	76.8	249
2025	94.5	276
2026 to July	95.8	131

That is a 62% rise from the 2021 low, a real recovery after a poor decade.

It is also the bottom of the table. Across 44 Dubai submarkets with at least 120 registered office contracts in 2025 and 2026, Motor City ranks 36th at AED 94.5 per sq ft, against a median submarket of AED 115.9. Downtown Dubai runs at 270 and Business Bay at 149.3, on the same registry basis.

Cheap is not the same as bad. It is the district’s main commercial argument, and it is why an occupier priced out of Business Bay looks here. But it does mean rent has a long way to travel before it supports the prices now being paid off-plan.

How full is Motor City?

No vacancy or occupancy rate is published for Motor City, and none is published for any single Dubai submarket. So I computed one.

Every registered lease carries a start date, a duration and a unit number, so each can be tested for whether it was still running on a given day. Counting units with an active lease on 3 August 2026, against every unit ever appearing in a lease or sale record: 288 of 354, or 81.4%.

That is our estimate, and it can only be compared with itself. Running the identical method across all Dubai offices returns 69.8%. On that like-for-like basis Motor City sits above the citywide figure, ninth of 39 submarkets with 150 or more units, against a median of 75.5%.

A warning about a comparison you will see elsewhere, including in an earlier draft of this article. Cushman and Wakefield Core put Dubai-wide office occupancy at 92%. That figure is not comparable with the one above. It rests on a different basis and a surveyed sample, and the identical registry method used here returns 69.8% for the same city. Setting 81.4% against 92% would make Motor City look weak when, measured consistently, it is above average. Do not mix the two.

The obvious objection is owner-occupation, since an owner using their own office registers no tenancy. That can be tested. Of the 241 units ever sold in these three buildings, only four have never once appeared in the lease record, the most recent sold in 2023. Owner-occupation runs under 2% of sold stock here.

Two things move the estimate in opposite directions: a unit never leased and never sold is invisible to both datasets, flattering occupancy, while a renewal registered late reads as a void that is not there.

Offices for sale Motor City: a pipeline 43 times the Dubai ratio

This is the number that matters.

That is 362 units. Al Hebiah First, the registry name for Motor City, currently holds 515 office units across delivered and older unlinked stock. The pipeline is therefore 70% of everything standing. Measured against the 354 units in the three buildings that carry the entire leasing record, it is a 102% increase.

For scale: across Dubai as a whole, the registered office pipeline is 1.6% of existing office stock. Motor City’s is 43 times that ratio.

Behind those 362 units sit five more towers in the same O1NE District masterplan with no published phasing dates, and the master developer. Union Properties told Zawya on 3 August 2026, through chief executive Amer Khansaheb, that it holds around 6.6 million sq ft of gross floor area in Motor City not yet launched, plus a 2023 agreement with Dubai Land letting it change land usage across that bank. None of it has been announced as offices, and every Union Properties launch here since 2024 has been residential. But nothing prevents it being offices later.

Thinking about a commercial purchase here? Whether a district can absorb its own pipeline is the most useful thing to check before you commit, and the registry will tell you.

The new units are also larger than the district’s average. That is worth noting and easy to over-read. The median registered Motor City lease is 1,151 sq ft and DAWN’s smallest unit is 1,963. But large space here is not hard to let: units of 1,963 sq ft and above are 81.4% occupied against 83.3% for smaller ones, a gap of under two points, and across Dubai large offices are let at 71.9% against 69.6% for small, which is to say slightly better. There is no evidence in the registry that big offices sit empty. The absorption question is about volume, not size.

Al Hebiah First: the costs nobody quotes

Motor City is registered as Al Hebiah First. Three costs rarely come up in a sales pitch.

Service charges. The DLD index, 2026 budget year, shows Control Tower offices at AED 22.15 per sq ft and Detroit House at AED 14.21. A new building sets its own opening budget before an owners association exists, so it can open above either.

District cooling. Emicool serves Motor City from its DCP7 plant, and its terms state the contracted capacity charge is paid monthly “regardless of connection or consumption”, with capacity set by the master developer. An empty, unfitted office carries it from the day capacity is contracted.

Fit-out. These offices sell shell and core, meaning bare concrete. Turner and Townsend’s 2026 guide puts Dubai and Abu Dhabi medium spec near AED 1,029 per sq ft, a prime blend that likely overstates a Motor City job, but even well under it a 2,600 sq ft unit is a seven-figure fit-out.

Frequently asked questions

How much does an office cost in Motor City?

Ready offices registered at a median of AED 1,551 per sq ft in the first seven months of 2026, across ten transactions. Off-plan units in the same district registered higher, between AED 1,830 and AED 2,051 per sq ft. Figures are Dubai Land Department registered sales, not asking prices.

What is the rental yield on a Motor City office?

Registered rents averaged AED 95.8 per sq ft in 2026 to July. Against the 2026 ready sale median of AED 1,551, that implies a gross yield near 6.2%, our estimate, before service charges, cooling, voids and fit-out. The 2026 sale median rests on ten transactions.

What is the office vacancy rate in Motor City?

None is published, for Motor City or any Dubai submarket. From the registry, 288 of 354 known office units had an active lease on 3 August 2026, so about 81% were let. That is our estimate. The same method returns 69.8% across Dubai, so Motor City sits above the citywide figure.

Is Motor City a good area to buy an office?

It is Dubai’s cheapest mainstream office submarket at AED 94.5 per sq ft, ranking 36th of 44, and it is reasonably well let. The open question is absorption: 362 new office units are registered against 515 existing, a pipeline 43 times the Dubai-wide ratio.

Which buildings have offices in Motor City?

Three carry the entire leasing record: Control Tower, 38 storeys, completed 2009; Detroit House, six storeys, 2010; and Apex Atrium, four storeys, 2010. Daytona House also has offices. Since 2024 every registered ready office sale was in Control Tower or Detroit House.

What are service charges for Motor City offices?

The Dubai Land Department index for the 2026 budget year shows Control Tower offices at AED 22.15 per sq ft and Detroit House at AED 14.21. New buildings set their own opening budgets and can open higher. District cooling capacity charges apply separately, even on an empty unit.

The read

Motor City offices are cheap, the recovery is real and registry-verified, occupancy is above the Dubai average on a like-for-like basis, and the district has genuine amenity and road access. Those are facts in its favour, and most of them cut against the way fringe submarkets are usually written about.

The open question is volume. A district with roughly 354 leasable office units in the buildings that actually trade is being handed 362 more, on a pipeline ratio 43 times the city’s. Whether that is absorbed depends on demand that has not been tested at this scale here, and the last two years of price evidence rest on very few transactions.

Ask the seller one question before any other: who absorbs 362 units in a district this size, and over how long?

I’m Fahad Al Kuwari, a buyer’s consultant for Dubai offices. I work from the registry, not from listing pages. If you are weighing a commercial purchase in Motor City or anywhere in Dubai and want the numbers checked first, reach me at fahadalkuwari.com.

Sources. Dubai Land Department registered sale and lease transactions, through July 2026 (sales) and 3 August 2026 (leases), and the DLD commercial units register. DLD service charge index, 2026 budget year. Emicool tariff terms. Union Properties CEO interview, Zawya, 3 August 2026. Turner and Townsend Fit-Out Cost Guide 2026.

Occupancy and yield figures are our estimate, computed from the registry, and are comparable only with figures computed the same way. Where a figure rests on few transactions, the count is printed beside it. No occupancy rate is published for Motor City by any source.