DMDC on why Dubai's prime buyers are renovating, not relocating

Construction Week has published an insights piece on where we see demand moving in prime Dubai residential. The pattern is that owners in these communities are increasingly choosing to rebuild what they have rather than trade up to something else — and they are underwriting that decision the way they would underwrite an acquisition.

It shows in our own book before it shows anywhere else. Investors now account for roughly 40 per cent of our turnover, with European buyers the most active, and we have signed AED 223 million of work across Palm Jumeirah, Emirates Hills, Dubai Hills and Jumeirah Golf Estates.

Raji Daou gave the piece a worked example rather than a claim: a Palm Jumeirah villa bought at AED 30 million, AED 11 million spent on structural redevelopment and a plot extension, and the house now positioned for the market at AED 65 million. That arithmetic only holds if the programme holds.

Which is the part we care about. A renovation priced as an investment has to be delivered as one, and that argues for control rather than scale: design, engineering, procurement, manufacture and site answer to the same programme, and none of it is subcontracted. How we work sets out the sequence in full.

Two of this year’s decisions sit behind it. DMDC Estates opened in April 2025 with an AED 100 million commitment, so the group now carries its own risk on houses of exactly this kind. DMDC Woodworks began production in November 2025 — a 30,000 sq ft facility built at a cost of around AED 10 million, which is what puts the joinery on the same critical path as everything else.

The company turned four this year, having gone from one employee to more than 800. Read the full piece at Construction Week.