The UAE government’s deft management of the COVID-19 pandemic and a highly successful vaccination campaign has benefitted the real-estate sector, according to Jyotsna Hegde, President of Dubai-based Sobha Realty.

The company is currently developing the $4-billion Sobha Hartland, an 8-million-square-feet luxury freehold master development in Dubai’s Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum City.

Hegde said the developer is seeing a lot of interest from overseas customers, who want to relocate their businesses and families to Dubai following the UAE’s successful pandemic management, which includes world’s largest vaccination programme in terms of doses administered.

More than half of the company’s customers are local buyers, with overseas customers from India, China, Africa, Europe and other Gulf countries making up the rest. “Europeans were not big buyers for this market, but we see that trend changing now, which is very interesting,” she said.

From January to April 2021, Dubai’s real-estate transactions grew 72 percent year-on-year in value to reach 92 billion dirhams, according to data from Dubai Land Department.

Hegde said the company registered sales worth 600 million dirhams in the first quarter of 2021.

“In a previous interview, I had said my target is only 2 billion dirhams. However, the demand is such, the market is changing in such a manner, that things might change.”

In May, the company launched two projects in Hartland: Phase 3 of Tranquillity plots, comprising 19 plots for customised villa development, and The Waterfront District, beginning with the 35-storey Waves, the first of 12 residential towers planned for the district.

“We have sold about 50 percent of Sobha Hartland masterplan and built about 30 percent,” Hegde said. She added that the company is on track with its 2021 hand-over schedule for over 1,337 units, equivalent to more than 2 million sq. ft of built-up area.

With COVID-19 yet to abate in different parts of the world, difficulty in sourcing materials amid supply chain bottlenecks has resulted in the cost of materials raising overall construction costs, according to the latest RICS Global Construction and Infrastructure Monitor, released in May.

Hegde pointed out that the company’s resilient backward integration model, with its emphasis on full control of the construction process and in-house resources to develop projects from concept to handover, mitigated the impact of such supply chain disruptions.

“We were initially affected for a month and a half last year, but thereafter, everything functioned extremely efficiently. We are a completely backward integrated company, so we didn’t face any challenge on the materials front,” she said.

Noting that UAE’s status as a logistics hub also ensured that the flow of construction material remained unimpeded, Hegde noted that for the construction industry, “The plan [announced in March] to position the country as a global industrial hub is very important.”

With Hartland set for completion in four years, Sobha is ready to launch a major new master plan this year. “For now, all our efforts will be focused on Dubai. We will have an announcement in the coming weeks,” Hegde said.

She added that the importance of indoor and outdoor space, as demonstrated by the pandemic, would be reflected in the next master plan. The Hartland master plan, launched in 2014, had allocated 30 percent of the total land area to green cover and open spaces.

(Reporting by Anoop Menon; editing by Seban Scaria)

anoop.menon@refinitiv.com

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