Predictions 2018: Azizi Developments CEO Farhad Azizi

It has been an encouraging year for the Dubai real estate sector. Despite some challenges due to external pressures including currency fluctuations, an economic slowdown, geo-political turmoil and some disruption in oil prices, the market showed very encouraging signs of not just recovery, but maturity in 2017.

Against this backdrop, the residential real estate sector is witnessing a shift from a predominantly investor-led to an end-user dominated market.

According to estimates by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), non-oil growth in the UAE will remain above 3 per cent in the medium term, supported by accelerated investment leading up to Expo 2020. This economic revival is creating favourable opportunities for the real estate sector – both for buyers and developers.

The UAE Government too has been tremendously supportive of the sector – with stronger regulation by the Dubai Land Development (DLD) ensuring more safety and security, which is further encouraging buyers to make the shift from renting to owning a home.

The UAE’s overall allure as a prime destination for property ownership with high return on investment has also contributed to making it an attractive market for expats to buy property.

Meanwhile, the UAE, and Dubai in particular, is a dynamic real estate market and continues to attract growing interest from developers who are creating adequate supply to meet the current market demand.

Despite popular belief that the real estate market is grappling with slow demand, we have seen healthy sales, as evident in our sales growth this year.

Historically, the property market performance in the UAE has been impacted by the existing project pipeline and successful delivery of projects from developers. Over the past couple of years, we have seen this play out quite successfully and we expect it to continue as the portfolio of mega real estate projects in the UAE, especially Dubai, continue to grow.

Azizi Developments has been conceptualising and developing new projects across the city to drive this demand from GCC investors and individual buyers, especially ahead of Expo 2020, and we have witnessed year-on-year sales growth of 200 per cent across our portfolio of properties in Dubai.

In the last three years alone, we have completed over 1,000 units in the emirate across nine different projects – a significant milestone for the company. Further developments are also set to be delivered in 2018.

The reason why we have been able to grow at such a rapid pace is because we have been able to identify and meet the demand for residential real estate in key locations across Dubai.

According to market research, there is a huge demand for premier housing in new locations across Dubai. In this regard, Mohammed Bin Rashid City offers a promising investment opportunity for the future and we saw great opportunity to set up our latest project – Azizi Victoria here.

Dubai’s Vision 2021 aims to attract international audiences to Dubai and we believe that real estate developers have a key role to play in making this a reality by developing new and emerging neighbourhoods across the city.

Supporting this vision is the trend of off-plan properties, which has emerged as good value for buyers. Encouraged by attractive payment plans from developers and dreams of making Dubai a permanent home, we are also witnessing interest in off-plan from millennial buyers who are increasingly looking to own a home in Dubai.

Read: Dubai developer Azizi to complete second Palm project in Q4 2018

To meet this demand, developers are looking for strategies that maximize value for themselves and their buyers. For instance, fully integrated projects in the best locations, with the most desirable community living standards that offer an unmatched lifestyle destination are the most coveted at the moment.

A few developers, Azizi Developments included, invest their own equity into a project prior to the launch. We find that this translates into greater stability of our projects and ultimately enhances transparency between the company, its customers and other stakeholders.

As Dubai enters a more fevered pace of development in the run-up to Expo 2020, nobody doubts the long-term growth potential of the Dubai property market. The market has shown strong signs of stabilisation, underpinned by increasing sales activity in 2017.

Further growth of the sector depends on the successful delivery of these projects, which already look like they are well on track. As international investors continue to show a healthy interest in the market, we expect that it will be a win-win situation for both buyers and developers in the long term.