Real estate analytics for Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the UAE
Real estate in the UAE is three businesses that happen to share a word. A developer sells units off-plan, collects against a payment plan and builds against those collections. A brokerage buys leads, lists properties, runs viewings and earns commission when a deal registers. A property manager or landlord fills units, collects rent — often as a schedule of post-dated cheques — and keeps buildings running within a service-charge budget. Each has its own systems, its own KPIs and its own regulator-facing records, and a dashboard built for one is wrong for the other two.
This page sets out the three models separately, then the definitions, the systems and the calendar they share. It is explanatory throughout: the registrations, escrow rules and tax treatments mentioned are the client’s and their advisers’ responsibility, and the dashboard reports status against them rather than certifying anything.
Delivered remotely on GST hours, as a fixed price quoted before work starts, under the Power BI dashboards by industry UAE structure used across the site.
Developers
A developer’s model has three clocks running at once: sales, collections and construction. The dashboard’s job is to show them on one page, by project and by SPV, so the question "are collections keeping pace with the build?" has a number rather than an opinion.
- Units sold versus launched, by project, unit type and launch phase, with sales velocity as units sold per week since launch.
- Payment-plan collections versus schedule: amounts due by instalment date under each sale agreement against amounts received, by project, with the overdue balance aged.
- Escrow account reconciliation (explanatory): receipts into the project escrow account against the sales ledger, and withdrawals against construction progress, reported so the developer’s finance team can reconcile the two under the off-plan escrow rules that apply in Dubai. The dashboard shows the position; compliance with the rules is the developer’s and the escrow agent’s.
- Oqood registration status: sold units by whether the off-plan sale has been registered, and the lag between sale and registration.
- Cancellations and resales: units cancelled by reason and stage, and the time to resell.
- Construction progress versus collections: consultant-approved progress percentage against cumulative collections percentage, by project and month.
- Agent and channel commissions: commission payable by broker and channel, matched to registered sales rather than reservations.
Brokerages
A brokerage runs on leads and time. The systems are a CRM, one or more portals and a listings tool, and the numbers that matter are the cost of a lead by source, how fast it is answered and how many viewings it takes to close.
- Lead source and cost: leads and spend by portal (Property Finder, Bayut, Dubizzle), by referral and by campaign, giving cost per lead and cost per deal by source.
- Response time: minutes from lead creation to first agent contact, by agent and source, median and 90th percentile.
- Viewings to deals: viewings per closed deal, by agent and property type.
- Listing quality and duplication: listings by completeness score, and the same unit listed more than once under different agents.
- Agent productivity: listings, viewings, offers and deals per agent per month, with commission earned.
- Commission pipeline: expected commission by stage (offer, MOU, transfer), with the DLD registration lag between agreement and transfer shown as a separate measure.
Property management and landlords
For a landlord or manager the model is the rent roll and the buildings. Cheques are the UAE-specific element: rent is commonly paid by a schedule of post-dated cheques, and the ageing of those cheques is a measure in its own right, distinct from arrears.
- Occupancy and vacancy days: occupied units as a share of lettable units, and vacancy days per unit between tenancies, by building.
- Rent roll and cheque schedule: contracted annual rent by building and unit, with the PDC schedule by maturity month and PDC ageing (cheques deposited, cleared, bounced, replaced).
- Ejari and Tawtheeq registration status: tenancies by whether the contract is registered (Ejari in Dubai, Tawtheeq in Abu Dhabi) and the lag from signature to registration.
- Renewals due: tenancies expiring in the next 30, 60 and 90 days, with the notice status and the proposed rent change.
- Arrears: rent due and unpaid by tenant, aged, separated from cheques not yet due.
- Service charge budget versus actual: for owners’ associations and managed buildings, actual spend against the approved budget by category, in the context of the Mollak system used for service-charge management in Dubai. The dashboard reports variance; the approvals remain with the association and its manager.
- Maintenance cost per unit: reactive and planned maintenance spend divided by units, by building and month.
- Yield by building: net operating income divided by the valuation or cost base, by building.
KPI definitions
Ten definitions across the three business types, written to be argued with before the model is built. Each carries a formula and the trap that most often makes the number wrong.
| KPI | Definition | Formula | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales absorption | Units sold as a share of units launched, by project and launch phase, with sales velocity as units sold per week since launch. | Units with a signed sale agreement ÷ units released for sale; velocity = units sold ÷ weeks since launch | Reservations are not sales; count from the signed agreement, and show cancellations as a separate line rather than netting them silently. |
| Collections versus plan | Amounts received against instalments due under each sale agreement, by project and instalment date, with overdue balances aged. | Receipts matched to instalments ÷ instalments due to date | An instalment tied to a construction milestone falls due when the project consultant approves the milestone, not on a calendar date; the model needs the approval date. |
| Progress versus collections | Consultant-approved construction progress percentage compared with cumulative collections as a percentage of total contract value, by project. | Approved progress % − (cumulative collections ÷ total sales value) % | Progress approved by the project consultant and progress claimed by the contractor differ; use the approved figure and say so on the page. |
| Cost per lead and per deal | Portal, campaign and referral spend divided by leads and by closed deals, by source and month. | Spend by source ÷ leads by source; spend by source ÷ deals attributed to source | Portal invoices are monthly and leads are daily; attribute spend to the month the leads arrived, and record the source at lead creation, not at closing. |
| Lead response time | Minutes from lead creation in the CRM to the first logged agent contact, by agent and source, median and 90th percentile. | First contact timestamp − lead created timestamp | Only as good as the CRM logging; a WhatsApp reply that is not logged looks like no reply. |
| Viewings to deal | Viewings conducted per closed deal, by agent and property type. | Viewings in period ÷ deals closed in period | Deals close weeks after the viewings that produced them; report on a rolling quarter rather than a calendar month. |
| Occupancy and vacancy days | Occupied units as a share of lettable units at period end, and days vacant per unit between tenancies, by building. | Occupied units ÷ lettable units; vacancy days = new tenancy start − previous tenancy end | Units under refurbishment are not lettable; the model needs a unit status history, not just the current status. |
| PDC ageing | Post-dated cheques on hand by maturity month and by status (held, deposited, cleared, returned, replaced), reconciled to contracted rent. | Cheque value by maturity month and status; returned cheques ÷ cheques presented | A returned cheque is not arrears until the replacement fails; keep cheques not yet due out of the arrears figure entirely. |
| Service charge variance | Actual spend against the approved service-charge budget by category, for each building or owners’ association, year to date. | (Actual − budget) ÷ budget, by category | Budgets are approved per financial year, which may not be the calendar year; align the date table to the association’s year. |
| Yield by building | Net operating income divided by the building’s valuation or cost base, annualised. | (Contracted rent − vacancy loss − operating costs) ÷ valuation | State which base is used (last valuation or historical cost) on the page; the two give very different answers and both are legitimate. |
Systems we typically connect
Property systems are better at recording than at reporting, and the finance system rarely knows which unit an invoice relates to. The model holds the unit-to-ledger mapping; the table below lists how each source connects and what usually goes wrong.
| System | How it connects | Refresh | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yardi, MRI | Reporting database read access or vendor API | Nightly | Unit, lease and charge codes are configured per client; the mapping to the KPI definitions is agreed before the build, not discovered during it. |
| Property Finder, Bayut, Dubizzle exports | Lead and listing exports, or the CRM they feed | Daily | The same lead can arrive from two portals; deduplication needs a rule (phone number, time window) that the brokerage agrees. |
| Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho CRM | Standard connector or API | Hourly or daily | Response time is only measurable if first contact is logged; the model exposes unlogged leads rather than hiding them. |
| Finance (Odoo, SAP Business One, Dynamics 365 Business Central) | Database, API or OData | Nightly | Invoices rarely carry the unit; the unit-to-ledger mapping is built and owned in the model. |
| Excel cheque registers | Read from a fixed folder by Power Query | Daily | Usually the only record of PDC status; the register is kept but given a fixed structure so the query survives edits. |
| DLD / Ejari / Tawtheeq exports (where available) | Portal exports to a fixed folder | Weekly or monthly | Availability depends on your account and role; where an export is not available, registration status is taken from the property system and labelled as such. |
Abu Dhabi and other emirates
A portfolio that crosses emirates crosses registries. Tenancy registration is Ejari in Dubai and Tawtheeq in Abu Dhabi; the Department of Municipalities and Transport is the Abu Dhabi authority for the property market; entities set up in ADGM sit under their own regulatory and data-protection regime. The model carries an emirate dimension so the same occupancy, arrears and registration measures are reported for each emirate under its own registry, and a group sees the whole portfolio on one page without the two registries being merged into a single meaningless status. The Power BI consulting UAE page covers Abu Dhabi delivery and the residency options in more depth.
Seasonality
Leasing slows in the summer as families travel, picks up sharply after Ramadan and Eid, and developers cluster launches in the last quarter around the major property events. A dashboard that compares August with July will report a collapse every year and a recovery every September. The date table carries Ramadan, Eid, the summer months and the launch season as attributes, and every page has a comparable-period toggle: same calendar month last year, same Ramadan-adjusted period, or same number of working days. The page says which is selected.
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Three things to look for while it is open:
- Drill from the portfolio occupancy figure to a building, then to a unit, and note that the rent roll, arrears and PDC schedule on the unit page are the same measures the KPI table defines.
- Open the collections-against-plan page and change the project selector; the escrow and Oqood status columns follow the same project because they sit on one model.
- Switch the comparable-period toggle to Ramadan-adjusted and watch the leasing enquiries comparison change.
Multi-entity
A developer group typically has a holding company, a project SPV per development, a brokerage arm and sometimes a property management company, each on its own ledger. The model carries an entity dimension so a project SPV’s collections, a brokerage’s commissions and a holding company’s consolidated view come from the same tables, with intercompany fees eliminated in the model and row-level security by entity.
VAT treatment differs across those entities and across the properties they hold. The supply of residential property and of commercial property is treated differently, and the first supply of a new residential building differs again. The model reports output and input VAT by entity, property type and return period so each entity’s figures can be reconciled to its VAT return; the treatment is decided by your tax adviser, not by the dashboard. We are not tax agents.
Questions about real estate analytics
Can Power BI handle real estate analytics in the UAE?
Which systems can you connect — Yardi, MRI, Property Finder?
Can we see collections against payment plans?
Can we track Ejari and Tawtheeq status?
Can one dashboard cover several projects and SPVs?
How much does it cost?
Fixed price for a real estate dashboard
Quoted before work starts against a written scope. The quote is the price.
A real estate build is quoted the same way as every other project on this site, following the sequence on the Power BI dashboard development Dubai page. Cheque registers kept in Excel are the usual complication and are brought into the model using the method on the Excel to Power BI migration Dubai page. Afterwards, the Power BI managed services UAE service keeps the portal feeds, the CRM connection and the monthly registry exports running.
It starts with a short discovery call, at no charge, and a look at your current reports and the systems behind them. From that we write a scope: the sources we will connect, the model we will build, the pages and visuals, the users and their security, the training and the handover.
We then quote a fixed price against that scope. The quote is the price. If we find something worse than expected inside the scope, that is our cost, not yours. If you want something outside the scope, we quote it separately before doing it, and you decide.
Payment is staged against the milestones written into the scope, so you are never paying ahead of what you have seen. Where a figure is published on this site it is a starting point rather than your quote, because the number depends on your systems; we would rather you knew how the price is built than read a "from" price as though it already applied to you.
The reporting diagnostic is a fixed AED 4,950. That is the whole amount. Nothing is added at checkout. A real estate build is quoted rather than sold from a page: builds start at AED 15,500 and most land in the AED 15,500 to AED 62,000 range, depending on the systems joined, the state of the data and the number of entities, pages and trained users. Those figures anchor the conversation; the number in your written quote is the one you pay.
The written scope for a real estate build itemises:
- Business types in scope: developer, brokerage, property management, or a combination.
- Sources: property system, CRM, portal exports, finance, cheque registers, registry exports — and how each connects.
- Projects, buildings, entities and emirates covered, and the security roles.
- Pages and mobile layouts, including any leasing or maintenance field view.
- Calendar logic: Ramadan, summer and launch-season comparisons.
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