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Mohamed Alabbar, the founder and chairman of Emaar Properties, has commented on the delivery challenge facing real estate developers in Dubai next year as the market continues to grow at a double-digit pace.  

“2024 for me, the way things are looking, from East Europe to our region, looks quite good. But at the same time, this world is so unstable, you never know what is going to hit you next year,” Alabbar said during a panel discussion at the Future Investment Initiative (FII) in Riyadh on 25 October.

“So we are very aggressive; we move extremely fast. We have problems in Dubai now with execution because the market is going 30 per cent up every year in volume, which we have to handle. I keep an eye on my cash flow,” he added.

With its 2022 annual results, Emaar said its group property sales reached AED35.1bn ($9.5bn), driven mostly by new project launches. The developer’s backlog of property sales reached AED53.2bn, which will be recognised as revenue in the coming years.

One of the challenges for developers in Dubai is securing contractor capacity. After several years of limited project activity, construction companies have scaled down their operations, which means they do not have the same appetite for projects as they had in the past. 

As one of Dubai’s most active construction clients, Emaar is engaged with a variety of construction companies. According to regional projects tracker MEED Projects, it has $3.2bn of projects at the execution phase.

Dubai-based Engineering Contracting Company has the largest backlog of Emaar work.