CDA auctions 5 Islamabad hotel plots on 26 September: F-5/1, D-12, E-11

The Capital Development Authority will auction five hotel plots in Islamabad on 26 September 2026, with bidding starting at 10:00am at the Jinnah Convention Centre. All five are commercial hotel sites, not residential, and the terms are built to pull in overseas money.

The five plots

• Plot No. 22, D-12 Markaz
• Convention Centre Hotel Plot No. 6, F-5/1
• Five-Star Hotel Plot No. 8, F-5/1
• E-11 Northern Strip
• Srinagar Highway, between the Sports Complex and Margalla Hotel

The two F-5/1 plots are the ones to watch. F-5/1 sits next to the Convention Centre and the diplomatic and government belt, which is the only part of Islamabad where five-star room demand has held up through the slow years.

CDA has not published reserve prices or plot areas in the auction announcement. Those come from the bid documents, and anyone serious about bidding needs them before 26 September, not on the day.

The payment terms

This is where the auction is unusual, and where the discounts are:

• 25 percent down is enough to get your building plan approved, so construction can start well before the plot is paid off
• Full payment within 30 days earns a 5 percent rebate
• Payment in US dollars earns a further 5 percent discount
• Possession at 75 percent paid, against a bank guarantee for the balance
• A one-year payment plan is available to successful bidders

Stacking the two discounts is the headline: a bidder who clears the whole amount in dollars inside 30 days pays 10 percent less than the hammer price.

Overseas Pakistanis

Overseas investors must obtain an auction token at least one day before the event, so 25 September is the practical deadline for anyone abroad. Payment is accepted through a Roshan Digital Account or normal local banking channels. If you are bidding from abroad and have not opened an RDA, that is a bank process measured in days, not hours.

What CDA is committing to

The authority says it will provide independent access roads to the sites, handle the relocation of electricity infrastructure, and upgrade sewerage for the plots. Those are the three costs that usually land on the buyer in Islamabad commercial auctions and then stall a project for a year, so getting them in writing changes the arithmetic.

Before you bid

Work out the transfer cost, not just the bid. Stamp duty, registration and CDA transfer charges are on top of the hammer price, and on a commercial plot they are not small. Our stamp duty calculator gives the provincial and ICT rates, and the plot size converter turns the square-yard figures in the bid documents into marlas and kanals if that is how you think about land.

For anyone buying to run rooms rather than to flip, run the numbers on yield first with the rental yield calculator.