The Dubai Land Department (DLD), a government agency for the real estate sector, said it launched a real estate tokenization pilot program, claiming to be the first property registration authority in the Middle East to use blockchain technology for ownership acts.
The initiative was developed with digital assets Watchdog Virtual Assets Reguulatory Authority (Vara) and Dubai Future Foundation (DFF). The project is aligned with the real estate strategy in 2033 of Dubai and the wider efforts to strengthen its position as a world technological center.
The ministry has planned that tokenized real estate could represent 7% of the city’s total real estate transactions, reaching 60 billion dirhams ($ 16 billion) by 2033.
Dubai’s push in real estate tokenization reflects an increasing trend in the integration of blockchain into traditional markets, placing real assets (RWA) such as obligations, funds and credit on cryptographic rails.
Rwas digital token versions can be held and transferred to the blockchain, reducing obstacles to entry for investors and increasing market liquidity. Unlike crowdfunding, which pools investor funds for property purchases, the tokenization provides a more structured property model. However, a McKinsey tokenization report listed real estate last year as one of the classes that could be faced with the adoption of slower growth tokenization due to operational obstacles.
Marwan Ahmed Bin Ghalita, CEO of DLD, said that the initiative would “simplify and improve the purchasing, sales and investment processes” in local real estate, and that the ministry engages with technological companies to refine the project before setting it up.
