Half of the properties in Binghatti Properties' latest branded residences project in Downtown Dubai – Mercedes-Benz Places – have sold out a day after it was launched, signalling robust buyer demand on the back of the UAE’s vibrant property market, its chief executive has said.
Having announced the 65-storey residential project in early December, the Dubai developer hosted the launch of the project on Wednesday in the Meydan Hotel.
The response to the sales since it was announced less than two months ago has been "phenomenal", Muhammad BinGhatti told The National on Thursday.
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
Muhammad BinGhatti,
Binghatti Properties
He confirmed that 50 per cent of the project, which is expected break ground this year, has already been sold.
Mercedes-Benz Places – the German auto giant's first branded property project – will have 150 residences of two- to four-bedroom units and five penthouses that will have uninterrupted views of the Burj Khalifa.
Unlike with many of the branded projects that have been launched in the city, however, buyers of apartments in the new project will not receive a brand new Mercedes car.
The southern facade of the building – the opposite side facing the Burj Khalifa – features cladding that provides shading from the sun and provides electricity for up to 40 electric vehicles per day, Mr BinGhatti said.
"The idea is that it's a single-leaf design. The front elevation is all units facing Downtown and the rear is this solid facade that features these photovoltaic systems," he said.
"It's also designed on that side of the facade in line with the solar path. That's why we kept that side completely shaded and the other side more open."
The building's elliptical exterior is influenced by the curvature of some of the latest Mercedes-Benz cars, including the Vision EQXX, the Vision One-Eleven and the Concept CLA Class, which was unveiled at the IAA Mobility 2023 show in Munich.
The project is scheduled to be delivered by the fourth quarter of 2026.
Mercedes-Benz Places is Binghatti Properties' third branded project in Dubai, after the launches of Bugatti Residences by Binghatti in Dubai’s Business Bay and Burj Binghatti Jacob & Co Residences.
Sales in both projects are "doing very well" and they are about to launch the second phase in each development, Mr BinGhatti said.
"With Jacob & Co, we've just hit a billion dirhams in sales. In Bugatti, we've just exceeded a billion dirhams in sales. On both of those, we've successfully sold out phase one and now we're preparing to launch phase two."
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 – 323 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 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."
While the site in Downtown Dubai is one of the last areas to be developed, Binghatti Properties has recently acquired a plot of land in the neighbouring Business Bay for Dh370 million ($100.7 million).
Mr BinGhatti stated that the upcoming development on this land will be luxurious, but not necessarily branded.
"It is a luxury development, but we haven't really decided if this is going to be branded or not," he said.
"We're always on the lookout for collaborations that we see beneficial for us as a developer and as a brand, but we're very selective and very wary of who we're collaborating with and who we're participating with. If we don't see an added value, it's not something we'll jump at.
"It has to be something that adds value to our portfolio. We've done automotive, we've done horology, so if there is anything on the horizon, it would be something from a different industry, if we are to consider it."
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.
"I do expect something between a 10 [per cent] to 15 per cent increase over the next 12 to 18 months."
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Itcan profile
Founders: Mansour Althani and Abdullah Althani
Based: Business Bay, with offices in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and India
Sector: Technology, digital marketing and e-commerce
Size: 70 employees
Revenue: On track to make Dh100 million in revenue this year since its 2015 launch
Funding: Self-funded to date
ESSENTIALS
The flights
Emirates flies from Dubai to Phnom Penh via Yangon from Dh2,700 return including taxes. Cambodia Bayon Airlines and Cambodia Angkor Air offer return flights from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap from Dh250 return including taxes. The flight takes about 45 minutes.
The hotels
Rooms at the Raffles Le Royal in Phnom Penh cost from $225 (Dh826) per night including taxes. Rooms at the Grand Hotel d'Angkor cost from $261 (Dh960) per night including taxes.
The tours
A cyclo architecture tour of Phnom Penh costs from $20 (Dh75) per person for about three hours, with Khmer Architecture Tours. Tailor-made tours of all of Cambodia, or sites like Angkor alone, can be arranged by About Asia Travel. Emirates Holidays also offers packages.
Nepotism is the name of the game
Salman Khan’s father, Salim Khan, is one of Bollywood’s most legendary screenwriters. Through his partnership with co-writer Javed Akhtar, Salim is credited with having paved the path for the Indian film industry’s blockbuster format in the 1970s. Something his son now rules the roost of. More importantly, the Salim-Javed duo also created the persona of the “angry young man” for Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan in the 1970s, reflecting the angst of the average Indian. In choosing to be the ordinary man’s “hero” as opposed to a thespian in new Bollywood, Salman Khan remains tightly linked to his father’s oeuvre. Thanks dad.
Film: Raid
Dir: Rajkumar Gupta
Starring: Ajay Devgn, Ileana D'cruz and Saurabh Shukla
Verdict: Three stars
Seemar’s top six for the Dubai World Cup Carnival:
1. Reynaldothewizard
2. North America
3. Raven’s Corner
4. Hawkesbury
5. New Maharajah
6. Secret Ambition
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Our legal columnist
Name: Yousef Al Bahar
Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994
Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers
Company profile
Name: Fruitful Day
Founders: Marie-Christine Luijckx, Lyla Dalal AlRawi, Lindsey Fournie
Based: Dubai, UAE
Founded: 2015
Number of employees: 30
Sector: F&B
Funding so far: Dh3 million
Future funding plans: None at present
Future markets: Saudi Arabia, potentially Kuwait and other GCC countries
Our legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
In-demand jobs and monthly salaries
- Technology expert in robotics and automation: Dh20,000 to Dh40,000
- Energy engineer: Dh25,000 to Dh30,000
- Production engineer: Dh30,000 to Dh40,000
- Data-driven supply chain management professional: Dh30,000 to Dh50,000
- HR leader: Dh40,000 to Dh60,000
- Engineering leader: Dh30,000 to Dh55,000
- Project manager: Dh55,000 to Dh65,000
- Senior reservoir engineer: Dh40,000 to Dh55,000
- Senior drilling engineer: Dh38,000 to Dh46,000
- Senior process engineer: Dh28,000 to Dh38,000
- Senior maintenance engineer: Dh22,000 to Dh34,000
- Field engineer: Dh6,500 to Dh7,500
- Field supervisor: Dh9,000 to Dh12,000
- Field operator: Dh5,000 to Dh7,000
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Ads on social media can 'normalise' drugs
A UK report on youth social media habits commissioned by advocacy group Volteface found a quarter of young people were exposed to illegal drug dealers on social media.
The poll of 2,006 people aged 16-24 assessed their exposure to drug dealers online in a nationally representative survey.
Of those admitting to seeing drugs for sale online, 56 per cent saw them advertised on Snapchat, 55 per cent on Instagram and 47 per cent on Facebook.
Cannabis was the drug most pushed by online dealers, with 63 per cent of survey respondents claiming to have seen adverts on social media for the drug, followed by cocaine (26 per cent) and MDMA/ecstasy, with 24 per cent of people.
Tell-tale signs of burnout
- loss of confidence and appetite
- irritability and emotional outbursts
- sadness
- persistent physical ailments such as headaches, frequent infections and fatigue
- substance abuse, such as smoking or drinking more
- impaired judgement
- excessive and continuous worrying
- irregular sleep patterns
Tips to help overcome burnout
Acknowledge how you are feeling by listening to your warning signs. Set boundaries and learn to say ‘no’
Do activities that you want to do as well as things you have to do
Undertake at least 30 minutes of exercise per day. It releases an abundance of feel-good hormones
Find your form of relaxation and make time for it each day e.g. soothing music, reading or mindful meditation
Sleep and wake at the same time every day, even if your sleep pattern was disrupted. Without enough sleep condition such as stress, anxiety and depression can thrive.