DUBAI PROPTECH RISES AS AI, IMMERSIVE TOOLS RESHAPE BUYING

AI, immersive tech speeding up how Dubai buyers search, evaluate and invest

- BY NIVETHA DAYANAND

Dubai's real estate sector is entering a structural shift as artificial intelligence, immersive experience tools and blockchain-led ownership models start to reshape everything from search behaviour and diligence to pricing, maintenance and long-term investment decisions.

Startups, regulators and developers share the same goal: a faster, more transparent and fully digital property ecosystem built for global scale.

FROM MONTHS TO MINUTES

The speed of decision-making has become the most visible change. Buyers who would previously spend five to six months searching, verifying documents, checking comparable data and working with multiple intermediaries are now completing the same journey in minutes. Mohammad Mohammad, Founder of Smart Bricks, said buyers are accelerating their entire decision cycle because Al has removed the manual friction that once dominated every step.

"Proptech is rewriting the rules of Dubai's real estate market, delivering measurable efficiencies across the developer, broker, and buyer ecosystem," he said. Mohammad attributes this to what he calls an agentic AI infrastructure, which automates discovery, underwriting and diligence. The platform surfaces assets with the highest relevance, evaluates risk instantly, and matches properties with buyer intent in real-time. He added that "proptech is not just digitising workflows, it is compressing what used to be a six-month cycle into a matter of minutes."

The gains are also quantifiable. In a survey conducted by Smart Bricks among more than 4,000 Dubai buyers, timelines compressed by up to 80 per cent and due diligence costs dropped by as much as 70 per cent, delivering institutional-grade analytics without large data teams.

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