The world’s number 1 real estate development exporter? Assessing announced transnational projects from the United Arab Emirates between 2003–2014
Jorn Koelemaij
Abstract
Contemporary large-scale real estate developments often have an explicit transnational character. Particularly in late development contexts, they are frequently financed and developed by foreign stakeholders. United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based transnational developers have been the largest global providers of greenfield real estate foreign direct investment (GREFDI) between 2003 and 2014. A closer look at these activities, however, reveals that only a limited percentage of the announced projects eventually materialized. Based on a thorough study of several academic articles, online media coverage, and interviews conducted with real estate experts in Dubai and Abu Dhabi in 2018, this paper critically evaluates the current status of transnational real estate development projects (TREDs) announced by the UAE companies in the early 21st century, as well as the most common implementation strategies and rationales behind them. It illustrates how closely geopolitics, geo-economics, and real estate can be intertwined, especially when transnational developers are closely related to their home governments. Against this backdrop, TREDs are often a part of broader bilateral business deals, and can simultaneously be driven by the desire of acquiring symbolic capital on behalf of the political actors involved. Furthermore, it is concluded that TREDs that are facilitated by UAE-based developers are fairly similar to contemporary TREDS on behalf of government-related developers from other emerging economies.