NOOMA Properties
Dubai

Business Bay.

The canal district that reads as finished from the road and is nothing of the sort on paper. The register counts 416 plots, and fewer than four in ten are built out.

The plot register

How much of Business Bay is actually built.

The register records 416 plots here. 159 are complete — 38% — and 166 are empty. Among the plots that are not finished, 100 carry a height permission, and the tallest of those may reach 81 storeys.

  • Completed 159
  • Under Construction 56
  • Pre-Construction 25
  • Empty 166
  • Suspended 10

The tallest thing that could still go up

On a plot with nothing finished on it today.

Permitted height
81 storeys G+80
Current status
Pre-Construction
Plot
3466804

How to read this

  • Permitted is not planned. A height limit is what a plot is allowed to become. Nothing has to be built, and what is built need not reach the limit.
  • Empty means no structure is recorded. Not that work is about to start, and not that the plot is for sale.
  • Counted by the register’s own district name, not by a rectangle drawn on a map. A box around a neighbourhood picks up its neighbours’ plots and produces confident, wrong numbers.

Source: Dubai Development Authority plot register (BASIC_LAND_BASE), district BUSINESS BAY PHASE 1 & 2. Retrieved 6 August 2026.

What Business Bay is

A dense commercial and residential district on either side of the Dubai Water Canal, immediately south of Downtown. It was laid out as Dubai's second business core, which is why the land use skews commercial and why the towers sit closer together than almost anywhere else in the city.

For a buyer that density cuts both ways: you are walking distance from Downtown without paying Downtown prices, and you are also surrounded by plots that can still be built on.

Why the plot count matters here more than anywhere

Business Bay has more unbuilt land inside it than any district we track. A view across the canal is not a permanent feature of an apartment here — it is a function of what is permitted on the plots between you and the water, and those permissions are public.

That is the question to ask before you buy a floor plan with a view drawn on it, and it is the one question the developer's brochure will never raise.

Before you buy here

Ask us what is permitted on the plot next door.

For a specific building we will read the register around it — what stands there now, what is under construction, and what height the empty plots are permitted to reach. It takes us minutes and it is the question that decides whether a view is a feature or a temporary condition.

Ask about a building
Business Bay

Straight answers.

Is Business Bay finished being built?
No, and not nearly. The Dubai Development Authority's plot register records 416 plots in Business Bay Phase 1 & 2, of which 159 are recorded as completed and 166 as empty, with a further 56 under construction and 25 in pre-construction. Fewer than four in ten plots are built out. The district looks denser than it is because the completed towers are tall and clustered.
How tall can they build next to me in Business Bay?
The tallest permission we can find on a plot that is not yet finished is G+80 — a ground floor plus eighty storeys — on a plot recorded as pre-construction. Across the district, 100 unfinished plots carry a real height permission. A permitted height is a zoning envelope rather than a proposal: nothing has to be built, and what is built need not reach the limit. But it is the ceiling, and it is knowable before you buy.
Is Business Bay a good place to buy?
It is the closest you get to Downtown without Downtown pricing, on a canal, with a working commercial core rather than a purely residential one. The trade is construction: with 166 empty plots you should expect to live alongside building work for years, and you should check what is permitted on the plots that carry your view before you rely on it.
What does property cost in Business Bay?
We do not publish an area average, because we do not yet hold verified transaction data we would stand behind — and a number nobody can check is worth less than saying so. Ask us about a specific building and we will get you the recorded comparables rather than an average that flatters whichever listing we want to sell.
Where does your plot data come from?
The Dubai Development Authority's public plot register, queried by the register's own name for the district rather than by a rectangle drawn on a map. That distinction matters: a hand-drawn box around a neighbourhood picks up plots belonging to its neighbours and produces confident, wrong numbers.