Golden Visa through property: the threshold is AED 2 million, not 1

Search almost any forum thread or brokerage brochure about the "Dubai Golden Visa for AED 1 million" and you will find a confident, specific number attached to a confident, specific outcome: buy a million-dirham apartment, get the ten-year Golden Visa. As of September 2026, that pairing is wrong. The AED 1,000,000 figure is real and it does appear on an official Dubai Land Department (DLD) page, but it belongs to a different visa, with a different age requirement, a different term length, and a different legal basis than the property-investor Golden Visa most buyers think they are reading about.

This article separates the two schemes precisely, using only what DLD, the UAE Ministry of Economy & Tourism (MOET), the General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA) Dubai, and the Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs & Port Security (ICP) currently publish. Where the record is incomplete or contested (and on this topic it often is), that is stated plainly rather than smoothed over.

The number that actually unlocks the ten-year Golden Visa: AED 2,000,000

The property-investor Golden Visa is a ten-year, renewable UAE residence permit. DLD's own investor e-service describes the property condition as a total value of at least AED 2 million, wholly owned by the applicant, across one or more properties. MOET's official FAQ states the condition in near-identical terms, and because it is a direct government quote it is worth reproducing exactly:

"one or more properties with a total value of not less than AED 2,000,000"

That single sentence carries most of the load in this article. It fixes the threshold at AED 2,000,000, not AED 1,000,000; it allows the total to be spread across more than one unit; and it requires whole ownership by the investor. Everything else (off-plan purchases, mortgaged units, joint ownership, combining properties) is a variation worked out against that baseline.

Off-plan property qualifies, but "approved" is doing undefined work

Buyers frequently ask whether an off-plan unit, bought before handover, counts toward the AED 2 million figure. MOET's FAQ answers this directly, and again the wording is a direct government quote worth reproducing verbatim:

"purchase of one or more real estate units on the map with a total value of at least AED 2,000,000, provided that the purchase is made from local companies approved by the competent local authority"

So off-plan ("on the map") purchases are eligible in principle. The open question is what "approved by the competent local authority" actually means in practice. No DLD, MOET or GDRFA page publishes a named, Golden-Visa-specific list of approved developers. Secondary commentary consistently reads this as ordinary RERA developer registration plus a valid DLD project registration, evidenced by an Oqood interim-registration certificate. This is a plausible reading, since it lines up with how off-plan sales are regulated generally in Dubai, but it remains an inference by advisory firms rather than a sentence any regulator has published. No separate whitelist beyond standard RERA/DLD registration was found anywhere in this research. A buyer relying on an off-plan purchase should confirm the specific developer's standing directly with DLD rather than assume any RERA-registered project automatically qualifies.

Mortgaged property is eligible, but the equity rule is unsettled

A second recurring question is whether a mortgaged property can be used at all. It can. MOET permits financing "from a local bank determined by the competent local authority," and DLD's investor e-service requires a no-objection bank letter (an NOC) "indicating the paid amount and the balance" when the unit carries a mortgage. That much is confirmed on both sides.

DLD's own live investor page is not simply silent on this point; it disagrees with itself. Its top-level Description states a mortgaged unit needs a bank letter showing an AED 2,000,000 paid amount, which reads as a full-value floor. Its detailed Service Terms, further down the same page, require only that the NOC disclose the paid amount and outstanding balance against a property DLD has certified at AED 2,000,000 or more, with no stated percentage floor. Older commentary and several current portals separately describe a fixed threshold (sometimes framed as 50% paid, sometimes as a minimum AED 1,000,000 paid against the balance), and some press reporting describes this threshold as having been removed around February 2026, but neither the historical percentage nor its reported removal date appears anywhere on DLD, GDRFA or MOET's own pages. Whether that implies an equity floor, and if so what floor, is not something the primary sources state. Anyone financing a Golden Visa property with a mortgage should get written, current confirmation from DLD or their bank's Golden Visa desk rather than rely on a percentage quoted online; this is one of the areas most likely to have moved since any given article, including this one, was published.

The AED 1,000,000 figure: a different visa entirely

Here is the source of the confusion. DLD also runs a "Golden Visa Application – Retiree" e-service. It requires the applicant to be over 55 years old, and the property's purchasing value or market value to be AED 1,000,000, paid in full and unmortgaged (or, if mortgaged, with AED 1,000,000 already paid). It grants a five-year renewable residence permit, half the term of the investor route.

The branding is genuinely confusing, and the two Dubai regulators involved are not even consistent with each other about it. DLD titles its service "Golden Visa Application – Retiree," using "Golden" for this route. GDRFA, however, officially titles the equivalent service "Issuing a residence permit for the retired foreigner" – "Golden" appears only once, informally, in a fee note on that page, not in the service's own name. GDRFA reserves its actual "golden" branding for the investor route instead, which it titles "Issuing a golden residence permit (investors)." So whether the AED 1 million route counts as "a Golden Visa" partly depends on which regulator's page you're reading. What is accurate is narrower and just as important: it is a separate, structurally distinct scheme from the ten-year investor Golden Visa, with its own eligibility rule (age 55+), its own term (five years, not ten), and its own property threshold (AED 1 million, not AED 2 million).

At the federal level, ICP's long-term residence visa framework reinforces the same separation from a different angle: the ten-year Golden Visa is presented there as reserved for investors, entrepreneurs, specialised talents and researchers, and outstanding students, while a five-year Retirement Visa (age 55+, financial-eligibility based) sits alongside it as a distinct visa type. Two different regulatory framings, both official, both pointing the same direction: the AED 1 million figure is not a discount or an alternate entry point into the ten-year investor Golden Visa. It qualifies a different product, and a buyer under 55 cannot use it regardless of the property's value.

The practical consequence: if you are under 55 and you buy a property worth AED 1 million to AED 1,999,999, you do not qualify for either route on property value alone. You are below the AED 2 million investor threshold and ineligible for the retiree route on age grounds.

Golden Visa (investor) vs Retirement Visa: side by side

Two rows deliberately say "not addressed" rather than guessing. The evidence reviewed for this article covers the retiree route's headline conditions but does not extend to off-plan or multi-property rules for that specific track, so this article does not manufacture an answer for it.

The Taskeen 2-year route: a third scheme, and where the AED 400,000 figure actually belongs

There is a third property-linked residence permit worth naming precisely, because its numbers are the ones most often misattributed to the Golden Visa: DLD's Taskeen investor residence permit, a two-year renewable permit distinct from both routes above.

DLD's current Taskeen criteria state that a sole owner can apply "regardless of the property value," with no minimum stated, while co-owners must each hold a share "not less than AED 400,000." A previously-reported AED 750,000 minimum for sole Taskeen owners does not appear on DLD's current page (dated 8 September 2026); press sources attribute that removal to an update made via DLD's "Cube Centre" platform around April 2026, but that specific date and mechanism come from press/portal reporting only and were not independently confirmed against an official DLD announcement, so it is noted here for context, not asserted as settled fact.

The correction that matters most for readers researching the Golden Visa specifically: the AED 400,000 joint-ownership figure that gets widely repeated as a Golden Visa rule is not a Golden Visa rule at all. No primary DLD, MOET or GDRFA text states a per-applicant minimum joint-ownership share for the AED 2 million, ten-year investor Golden Visa. The AED 400,000 figure is confirmed only for Taskeen's two-year permit. If you have seen "AED 400,000 per co-owner" attached to "the Golden Visa" online, that appears to be a conflation of two separate DLD schemes, not a documented Golden Visa condition.

Combining properties: real, but the "three properties" cap is not

DLD and MOET both confirm, in the "one or more properties" wording quoted earlier, that an investor can combine more than one property to reach AED 2 million. That part is settled. What is not confirmed is any specific maximum count. A commonly repeated claim online caps this at three properties; no DLD, MOET, GDRFA or ICP text sets that or any other numeric limit. Treat "you can combine properties" as reliable and "up to three" as an unconfirmed add-on some portals have attached to it.

Purchase price or current market value? Genuinely open for the investor route

Buyers whose property has appreciated, or dropped, since purchase often ask whether the AED 2 million figure is judged against what they paid or what the unit is worth today. The investor e-service does not state a valuation method one way or the other. The retiree route, by contrast, explicitly allows "purchasing value or market value" for its own AED 1 million threshold. That contrast undercuts any confident claim that the investor route is assessed strictly on original purchase price to the exclusion of a current valuation. Secondary descriptions of DLD-licensed valuation certificates being accepted as proof of value elsewhere in the process point the same way. Treat this as an open question rather than a settled rule: if your qualifying value depends on which method applies, get a DLD property status statement or a DLD-licensed valuation and confirm directly which basis your application will be assessed against.

Ownership structure: freehold and designated areas, not a separate Golden Visa rule

None of the Golden Visa pages state a freehold-versus-leasehold rule in so many words: the requirement is only that the property be "wholly owned" by the investor. But that phrase is not floating free of Dubai's underlying ownership law. Under Law No. 7 of 2006, Article 4, and Regulation No. 3 of 2006, non-UAE nationals may hold full ownership of real property in Dubai only within areas the Ruler has designated for that purpose. Practically, this means a Golden Visa property necessarily sits inside one of those designated freehold areas; full ownership, and therefore Golden Visa eligibility on property grounds, is not available on land outside that framework at any price. This is a structural feature of Dubai property law generally, not a Golden-Visa-specific carve-out, and it is worth knowing before assuming any given address will work.

Insurance, renewal, continuity, and the 180-day exemption

A handful of operating conditions apply once the investor Golden Visa is granted, and MOET and GDRFA state these directly:

• Health insurance. Investors must carry comprehensive health insurance for themselves and their family members for the duration of stay, "or as applied by the competent local authority," per MOET's FAQ.
• Renewal. GDRFA Dubai states the Golden Residence Permit for investors "is valid for 10 years and can be extended if the same conditions are met," meaning the qualifying property investment must still hold at renewal, not just at issuance.
• Continuity of ownership. GDRFA's investment conditions include a lien mechanism intended to ensure "the continuity of ownership throughout" the residency period, alongside a general condition that the qualifying investment cannot be withdrawn during the ten-year term.
• Absence from the UAE. Golden Residence Permit holders are, per GDRFA, "exempt from the 180-day residency law" that otherwise requires periodic return to the UAE to keep an ordinary residence visa active.

What GDRFA does not spell out is what happens procedurally if a property's value has fallen below AED 2 million by the time renewal comes around. The renewal condition is stated only as "the same conditions" being met; no grace period, downgrade path, or refusal process is described in any primary text reviewed for this article. Secondary sources speculate about buying a replacement property, adding a second property to restore the combined total, or dropping to the two-year Taskeen permit instead, but none of that is confirmed by DLD, GDRFA, ICP or MOET. If your property's value is close to the threshold as a renewal date approaches, this is a case for direct, current confirmation from DLD or GDRFA rather than assumption either way.

Sponsoring family

DLD's fee schedule for the investor Golden Visa prices family sponsorship (spouse and children) at AED 5,774.50 per person, and parent sponsorship at the same AED 5,774.50 each, as add-ons to the primary applicant's permit. The retiree service separately confirms that a spouse and children can be sponsored under that route too. To illustrate the scale involved: sponsoring a spouse and two children under the investor route, at AED 5,774.50 per person, works out to AED 17,323.50 in sponsorship fees alone. This is a figure this article has calculated by multiplying DLD's published per-person rate, not a total DLD itself publishes, so it should be read as an illustration rather than an official combined fee.

Beyond sponsorship, several portals converge on a broader estimate of total government fees for the ten-year permit itself: medical fitness examination, Emirates ID, confirmation fees, DLD processing, and administrative charges, summing to a reported total near AED 9,885. None of these line items were confirmed against a single official DLD, ICP or GDRFA fee schedule during this research; treat the figure as indicative of the rough order of cost portals report, not as an official quote, and confirm current fees directly with DLD before budgeting precisely.

The legal foundation, and why dates matter more than usual here

The UAE's long-term residence visa system, Golden Visa included, operates under Federal Decree-Law No. 29 of 2021 on Entry and Residence of Foreigners. The UAE Cabinet approved Executive Regulations in April 2022, reported to take effect from September 2022, a reform widely credited with expanding the scheme to include loan-financed and off-plan property routes. Professional legal commentary attributes that 2022 expansion to Cabinet Resolution No. 65 of 2022, amending the original Cabinet Decision No. 56 of 2018, but this attribution has not been independently verified against the resolution's gazetted text, so it is presented as commentary, not a confirmed statutory citation.

This topic has also been the subject of more recent reported changes that could not be confirmed against any primary source as of 15 September 2026:

• A reported removal, around 20 February 2026, of a paid-in equity threshold for mortgaged and off-plan applications (discussed above under mortgaged property).
• A reported removal, around April 2026, of the AED 750,000 sole-owner Taskeen threshold via DLD's "Cube Centre" platform (discussed above under Taskeen).
• Reports that, from 14 July 2026, spouses and co-owners can no longer combine separate property shares to each independently qualify for the investor Golden Visa. This claim could not be corroborated on any DLD, GDRFA, ICP or MOET page as of 15 September 2026; DLD's current investor e-service text still reads "wholly owned by the investor (one or more properties)" with no stated joint-ownership carve-out. It is mentioned here only because it circulates widely, not because it is confirmed.

Given how much of this area has reportedly moved within 2026 alone, and how much of what circulates about it is unconfirmed or borrowed from an adjacent scheme, read this article as a snapshot as of 15 September 2026, not a permanent statement of law, and confirm current requirements directly with DLD, GDRFA, ICP or MOET before relying on any specific figure for a real transaction.