As part of its keenness to communicate with its global partners and establish cooperation relations with them to promote and develop Dubai’s real estate sector, the Dubai Land Department (DLD), through its Registration and Real Estate Services sector, toured the British capital London, during which it held seven benchmark meetings with its most prominent partners across several fields.
Majid Al Marri, CEO of the Registration and Real Estate Services Sector, presided over the meetings, where he met senior executives from a number of local and international institutions there, including the International Valuation Standards Council, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and CBRE, the largest international property consulting company.
The DLD’s delegation also met representatives from Geovation, part of the UK’s Ordnance Survey, the 200-year-old official organization in charge of UK maps. Among the prominent meetings held by the delegation was a meeting with representatives from Morgan Stanley Capital Index, during which Dubai’s advanced and the successive developments recorded by its real estate sector, were discussed.
Al-Marri said: “At the DLD, we are keen to keep communication channels open with our global partners, and London is considered one of the most important destinations, due to the presence of many local and international institutions and agencies, especially those in the real estate sector, in addition to the strong historical ties between the UAE and UK. The visit was successful as we were able to organize this large number of meetings that witnessed the discussion of all issues of common interest, and the means to develop relations with those parties in the future.”
The DLD’s delegation met with senior officials at Knight Frank’s global headquarters, one of the largest real estate consulting firms in the world. The visit was completed with a meeting with senior officials from the UAE Embassy in London, which aimed to discuss means of cooperation, especially in events organized by the embassy in the UK and the DLD’s contribution in supporting and participating in them.
A number of topics were discussed during these meetings, including valuation standards, benchmarking and best practices, building fire standards, land and building measurement best practices, data indices, and AI applications in light of the successive developments in the registration and real estate services sector.
The smart valuation team at the DLD includes Al-Marri; Mohammed Khodr Al Dah, director of the survey department; Yaser Mohammed Ahmed Ali, senior project manager; and Shamsa Abdullatif Al Muhairi, real estate dashboard section manager. The delegation provided extensive explanations on the sector’s most important projects and initiatives, most notably the real estate lawyer initiative, partial ownership, e-mortgage and smart valuation.
During the meetings, the DLD’s delegation also discussed the ‘Dubai we Learn’ initiative, and its alignment with its objectives and themes, including real estate valuation mechanisms. The DLD receives an average of 9,000 valuation transactions annually, of which 3,279 valuations for units. Currently, each transaction is evaluated by a committee that meets twice a week.
The valuation process is not highly time-consuming and is done with precision. This initiative comes as part of the DLD’s keenness to consistently innovate for the ease of mind of investors, especially through the new Smart Valuation Initiative that was launched to provide an instant, reliable, and robust property valuation service.
As part of the initiative, a machine learning platform, which is an advanced artificial intelligence model that analyses millions of transactions based on the property type and the neighborhood to quickly and accurately generate a valuation, was created based on the methodology followed at Dubai We Learn in all its projects, and with the direct supervision of premier experts in each relevant field, especially as Dubai, We Learn was designed for knowledge-sharing and innovation to offer best practice resource for all government entities.
