Dubai’s luxury home market reached record levels in 2023, with sales of $10 million-plus homes nearly doubling to $7.6 billion and outstripping global rivals London and New York, according to property consultancy Knight Frank. Twice as many $10 million-plus homes were sold in Dubai than in New York during the first nine months of the year – 2023 in Dubai compared with 159 in New York, Knight Frank said. The figures underline Dubai’s status as the “world’s most active $10 million-plus homes market”, according to Faisal Durrani, head of research for Mena at Knight Frank.
Branded Residences
Branded residences offer the developer “a more international audience”, Mr BinGhatti said. “These brands have existed globally for more than a century. They have fan bases all around the world, so it opens up a new audience for us.” Dubai’s property market, which has been on the rise since Covid-19, will see further growth but not at the same rate, according to Mr BinGhatti. “What I foresee moving forward is we will see a continuous increase in prices. However, it won’t be as sharp as the year before but it will steadily continue to grow,” he said.
Branded residences can command double the rent than non-branded residences in Dubai due to luxurious amenities and high demand for units in such projects from high net worth individuals. Industry executives say that prices also luxury and branded homes have a higher potential for price increases than the rest of the market. They added that Dubai is not a transitional market anymore because high net worth individual buyers are coming here to stay, and that’s why the market is maturing.
“Investors, landlords and tenants seem aligned on rental premiums for high-quality ‘branded residences. These contemporary, well-planned living spaces within desirable residential buildings provide luxurious amenities and can command up to 100 per cent higher rents than ‘non-branded’ units within similar locations,” said Lewis Allsopp, chairman of Allsopp & Allsopp.
Launch of Branded Residences in Recent Years
Dubai has seen a lot of branded residence launches over the past few years to meet the high demand, putting it at the top spot globally. Local developers such as Binghatti Properties, Danube Properties, RSG Group, Rove and others have launched branded residences to cash in on the demand as the world’s wealthy elites flocked to the emirate.
Binghatti Properties last week launched another branded residence Mercedes-Benz Places, becoming its third branded project after Bugatti Residences by Binghatti’s and Burj Binghatti Jacob & Co. Danube Propeties tied up with Fashion TV to launch Fashionz by Danube, featuring 700-plus apartments spread over 65 floors. Allsopp anticipated that the Dubai rental market would continue performing well for landlords and investors until such a time ready off-plan rental units enter the market in 2025-27 at a scale capable of addressing the current level of rental demand.
Chris Whitehead, managing partner, Dubai Sotheby’s International Realty, said for the past two or three years post-Covid lockdowns, high-net-worth buyers have been flocking from continental European countries like the UK, France, and Germany to relocate in Dubai, in part to benefit from its lack of real estate tax — leading to skyrocketing prices.
