Dubai’s property market will find equilibrium by 2027, Mohamed Alabbar, founder of Emaar Properties, said Monday at the AIM Congress in Dubai, even as the ongoing conflict between Iran, the US, and Israel continues to weigh on the emirate’s real estate sector.
Alabbar placed the current disruption in historical context. Since the 1920s, he noted, the global economy has absorbed roughly 50 major crises, each typically lasting two to three years. The conflict, which began on February 28, ranks among the region’s most severe geopolitical episodes in recent decades, rippling across hospitality, aviation, real estate, and tourism. He estimated the broader real estate sector could experience a 5 to 10 percent correction, framing it as an extraordinary but temporary situation rather than a structural breakdown.
Additional reference context is available at https://www.indexbox.io/blog/emaars-alabbar-dubai-property-market-to-achieve-balance-in-2027-despite-iran-war/.
Emaar Properties, the emirate’s largest listed developer, has not slowed its pace. The company currently has 90,000 units under construction across 18 markets. That operational momentum, Alabbar argued, is sustainable precisely because of Emaar’s financial position: strong cash reserves, robust cash flow, and a disciplined refusal to discount inventory. Some competitors have offered reductions reaching 50 percent. Emaar has not.
That distinction matters. Developers carrying higher debt loads have fewer options when markets soften. Alabbar’s argument is that low leverage and substantial liquidity allow Emaar to expand during an adjustment phase rather than retreat, a posture he contrasted with the discounting strategies weakening rivals elsewhere in the market.
By contrast, Emaar’s most visible commitment to that long-term posture came in June, when the company announced a Dh200 billion ($55 billion) megaproject in Dubai. The master plan covers more than 4.5 million square metres and is designed to accommodate nearly 150,000 residents. It will integrate residential towers, villas, commercial office space, retail, luxury hospitality facilities, and supporting amenities. Alabbar described the investment as preparation for the period after the current adjustment, a signal of confidence in Dubai’s regulatory environment and underlying demand.
He drew parallels to other prolonged regional disruptions, including the situation in Ukraine, arguing that businesses with long-term strategic horizons learn to operate through such periods rather than wait them out. The current moment, in his framing, is an adjustment phase. Companies with the financial discipline to hold their pricing and their pipeline will be positioned to capitalize once supply and demand realign.
Whether that realignment arrives on Alabbar’s 2027 timeline depends on assumptions that remain genuinely uncertain: that geopolitical tensions stabilize, that demand drivers in Dubai hold, and that the wave of new residential and commercial supply entering the market finds sufficient buyers. The scale of Emaar’s announced pipeline makes the answer to that last question one worth watching closely.