A federal circular retired two rules that had quietly excluded a large group of buyers. If you looked at the property route before 2026 and concluded you did not qualify, that conclusion is probably out of date.
The headline number has not moved: two million dirhams of property gets you a ten-year renewable residency. What changed on 20 February 2026 is how that two million is counted and the change is more consequential than the number.
Two long-standing interpretations went away.
The first was the requirement that AED 1 million be paid upfront in cash. That rule effectively excluded anyone buying on a staged payment plan, which, in a market where most transactions are off-plan, is a very large group.
The second was the 50% equity rule on mortgaged property, which required a buyer to have paid down half the loan before the property counted. Mortgaged property now qualifies far more readily.
The test is the purchase price shown on the title deed, not the current market value. Two things follow from that and they cut in opposite directions.
If your property has appreciated well past the threshold, the appreciation does not help you, the deed price is what is read. Conversely, if you bought above the threshold and the market has since softened, you are not penalised.
You may also combine an unlimited number of properties. If the total purchase price across all your title deeds reaches AED 2 million, you qualify. Three smaller units in different emirates count exactly as well as one large apartment, a point that changes the shape of a lot of portfolios.
Off-plan purchases from approved developers are eligible under defined conditions. Combined with the removal of the cash-upfront rule, this is the substantive shift: a buyer on a 20/50/30 plan is no longer waiting until the back end of the schedule to become eligible.
The condition to check, project by project, is whether the developer is on the approved list and what stage the file has to reach before the nomination can be raised. That is a question with a factual answer and it belongs in the dossier before reservation rather than after.
Since April 2026 the property route runs as a single workflow rather than two disconnected ones.
A Golden Visa is a residency permit. It is not tax residency and the two are routinely confused. Whether you become tax resident in the UAE and what that means for your obligations in your home country, is a separate question governed by day counts, centre-of-interest tests and the relevant treaty and it is a question for your own tax adviser, not for a property agent.
We will tell you whether a given purchase clears the threshold. We will not tell you what it does to your tax position, because that answer depends on facts about you that are none of our business unless you choose to share them with a professional who is qualified to act on them.
