UAE capital Abu Dhabi and its largest city Dubai have ranked top among global real estate transparency improvers over the last two years, according to a report.
The report published biennially by JLL and LaSalle looked at how global cities navigated risk and opportunity amid disruption based on data from 2024 to 2026. The six sub-indices evaluated in the report include performance measurement, market fundamentals, governance of listed companies and REITs, regulatory and legal frameworks, transaction process and sustainability and environment.
What make Abu Dhabi and Dubai stand out are the significant digitization of services and creation of new regulations. The Dubai Land Department is now a global pioneer in providing real-time and publicly accessible real estate data. This has reportedly helped the UAE become an attractive market for overseas investment.
The report says the volumes in the most transparent markets rose 64 per cent over the last 24 months. Thirteen countries, including the UAE, in the Highly Transparent tier account for 56 per cent of global income-producing real estate and 80 per cent of direct investment.
Not just the UAE, other Gulf nations like Saudi Arabia and Qatar also ranked among most improved markets of the past 10 years. This comes despite regional disruption in the Middle East.
The highest growing region was Asia Pacific, led by India. It was followed by Vietnam, South Korea, Australia and Thailand. These countries make up half of this year's top 10 global improvers.
Going by ranking, Abu Dhabi and Dubai are followed by Saudi Arabia, India (Tier 1), Vietnam, South Korea, Qatar, Australia, Thailand and Poland.
