Cumulative investment in the emirate’s real estate market is now at 1.4 trillion United Arab Emirates dirhams ($381 billion) with 56 billion dirhams invested in the sector so far in 2019, a top executive of the Dubai Land Department (DLD) said on Tuesday.  

Speaking at the Cityscape Global Conference, Majida Ali Rashid, CEO of the Investment Promotion and Management Sector at DLD, added that there are now a total of 750,000 investments made by 374,000 investors.

“All these are indicators of the stability of the real estate market,” she said.

Earlier, Salman Butti bin Mejren, director general DLD, said the department is boosting the emirate’s real estate market with new initiatives such as fractional ownership while also forging ahead with technological advances.

He said the new higher committee for real estate, launched earlier this month, would “organise the real estate planning to ensure the balance between demand and supply” in the emirate.

Cityscape Global opens in Dubai on Wednesday with more than 100 companies expected to participate. Majid Saqr Al Marri, CEO, Registration and Real Estate Services, DLD, said new fractional ownership title deeds for hotel apartment projects would provide a boost to the market by increasing opportunities for small scale investors.

“This will give the investor a chance to invest in a smaller ticket size – the unit might be divided between two to four title deeds so they can share the title deeds individually.

“It will boost the market and give opportunities to investors with a small budget, say the property costs 2 million (dirhams), four can share and each one will have a title deed,” he said.

Al Marri said e-mortgages were another initiative, linked to all UAE banks, which would allow non-residents more opportunities to invest in real estate. He added that block chain technology is now being used to link all of the department’s operations. “In time, we will link all of our services to that technology.”

Mahmoud Farghally, Research and Studies Specialist, DLD, said the real estate sector accounted for 13.6 per cent of Dubai’s GDP in 2018, which was 398 billion dirhams.

He said there were 54,000 real estate transactions in 2018, worth a total of 224 billion dirhams, with 54 per cent in mortgages.

There were 414 active real estate construction projects as of September 2019, with 86 projects started in 2018 and 62 projects completed 2018.

So far in 2019, 61 projects have been started and 20 projects completed, he said.

“All of these indicators have been reflective of the performance of the sector. We at DLD are saving no effort to ensure the transparency and competitiveness of the industry,” he said.

Farghally also highlighted Dubai’s progression in the Global Real Estate Transparency Index, now ranked first in the Middle East and 40th globally.

(Reporting by Imogen Lilywhite; Editing by Brinda Darasha)

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