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The UAE property market has boomed after a swift post-pandemic economic rebound and relaxed residency rules.
With this exponential growth, the value chain gaps in the real estate industry today present numerous opportunities to embrace digital transformation and shape what the ecosystem will look like over the next 10 years.
Digitalisation is rapidly changing the world as we know it – transforming how we work, consume and interact – and the real estate sector is no exception.
Real estate stakeholders such as developers, brokers, agents, investors and property managers should harness innovative technologies to enhance data utilisation, improve reporting capabilities and offer a unified and dependable data source.
This strategic shift allows professionals to maintain a competitive edge, prioritise strategic business objectives and deliver an enhanced customer experience. The UAE real estate market is growing rapidly, with new developments being built all the time.
This creates huge opportunities for property management solutions companies (proptech) such as Yardi to provide innovative solutions to meet the needs of investors, sellers and end-users.
The global proptech market has grown significantly over the years. It is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.3 per cent from $19.6bn in 2023 to $48bn by 2033, according to Future Market Insights.
Yardi in the Middle East
Yardi prides itself on the continued innovation of its platform with cloud-based, mobile-ready solutions that help clients streamline and modernise business processes that add value to every aspect of the real estate lifecycle.
The company has grown exponentially over the past 10 years in the Middle East to become the leading provider of property, asset and investment management software and mobile apps for all types and sizes of real estate companies and portfolios.
The company’s cloud-based technology helps property and asset managers automate processes, drive efficiencies and reduce costs while providing business intelligence to help minimise risk and improve strategic decision-making.
Yardi started its regional operations in 2012, with two employees and a handful of clients. Today, the company employs more than 80 dedicated professionals and works with over 100 clients in the Middle East, making it one of its fastest-growing regions.
“We launched our flagship product, Yardi Voyager, in 2012 and almost immediately saw high demand across multiple vertical markets. We replaced customised solutions with a software-as-a-service platform that fulfils all business operation requirements virtually and out of the box. This allowed companies to focus more on their business and worry less about the tools,” explains Said Haider, regional director of Middle East Sales, Yardi.
Yardi is dedicated to developing and supporting software for the region’s real estate industry with a proven track record of success across retail, commercial and residential real estate.
Almost 90 per cent of retail and commercial space in the UAE is operated and managed on the Yardi platform.
Given the dynamic nature of the real estate sector, which demands adaptability and real-time access to data, Yardi’s end-to-end solutions are highly scalable and cater to various real estate requirements.
The company offers a range of functionalities, including property management, accounting, leasing, maintenance, budgeting, forecasting, marketing, CRM and more.
“We have successfully identified and built requirements within the region into our products to provide clients with innovative technology solutions that will fundamentally change how we live, work and play,” says Haider.
Success stories
Yardi’s solutions have streamlined and automated processes for Al Futtaim Malls, leading to significant time savings. They have saved over 30 hours of data gathering and strategic planning per budgeting cycle, reduced the leasing planning cycle by 40 per cent, and achieved a 50 per cent reduction in time spent on automatic reporting.
“Yardi’s solution for budgeting and forecasting not only saves time during planning cycles, but also promotes user accountability, data reliability and represents one source of truth for forecast and budget revenue. The output is also customised as per our needs, and we could not be more grateful for that,” says Ian Mollon, general manager of Retail, Finance & Investment at Al Futtaim.
The company’s innovative solutions enabled Dubai’s Emaar Properties to shift from reactive to proactive business planning, empowering data-driven decision-making. This has enabled 50 per cent faster reporting through automation, a 40 per cent reduction in the leasing planning and approval cycle, and a 35 per cent improvement in the lead-to-deal cycle.
“Yardi’s SaaS platform not only enabled us to focus on the core business but also helped standardise the property management software across the group operations both locally and internationally,” says Binoo Joseph, chief information officer at Emaar Properties.
“This enabled us to manage retail, commercial and residential portfolios on one single unified platform.”
Furthermore, property investment firm Qatari Diar’s adoption of Yardi’s advanced solutions has significantly contributed to the company’s overall expansion strategies and increased profitability.
“Based on thorough market research, Yardi’s platform stood out as the only cloud-based, end-to-end, fully integrated solution which allows us to manage our entire business lifecycle, including operational, financial, leasing and maintenance activities all in a single database,” said Adnan Al Emadi, head of Asset Management at Qatari Diar.
By enabling data-driven decision-making and adopting a more informed risk management approach, Qatari Diar has experienced substantial benefits. These success stories are a clear indication of how Yardi’s solutions are disrupting the real estate and property management sector.
