Property Finder has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Dubai Land Department (DLD) to accelerate the city’s growth to becoming one of the world’s most transparent real estate markets.

This is the second time DLD is providing its data to Property Finder, with the aim to further strengthen Dubai’s position in the Global Real Estate Transparency Index.

By signing this memorandum, Property Finder understands the importance of data and transparency in the real estate market due to the influx of proprietary data available to larger organizations. As part of an important pillar of Property Finder’s business model, transparency lies in the heart of data collation and publication. Additionally, working with the Dubai government will provide opportunities to protect consumer information by developing important solutions to modern-day challenges.

The first such agreement between the two entities, in July 2019, DLD and Property Finder joined hands to reveal Dubai’s first official sales and rental price index, Mo’asher, that is released monthly on DLD’s and Property Finder’s website. The willingness of the Dubai government to partner with Property Finder for the second time after the launch of Mo’asher, further demonstrates the confidence it has in the real estate platform’s ability to deliver high quality products and services for the industry.

Since its launch, Mo’asher has significantly boosted Dubai’s position in the Global Real Estate Transparency Index. According to JLL’s 2020 report on Real Estate transparency that ranks 99 countries and territories and 163 global cities, it effectively positioned Dubai as 36th from its previous position, 40th. This ultimately strengthened the city’s position as Mena’s most transparent real estate market, climbing four places up the global ranking with expectations to grow further.

This is the second occurrence in which the DLD is providing their anonymized data to a private entity to make their data available to the public. The objective of this MoU is to increase the transparency by utilizing DLD’s insight to build solution-driven products that will educate and provide detailed information to consumers through Property Finder. The company has clear purposes in utilizing the data by building technologically optimized products that will give consumers all the information they would need to make a well informed and educated decision on renting and buying property in the UAE.

Michael Lahyani, Property Finder’s founder and CEO, said: “Property Finder and the Dubai Land Department share the same vision in further professionalising the real estate market. With operations across the wider Mena region, we have access to the largest set of proprietary data on asking prices and a number of other metrics that attribute to the larger real estate picture.”

“Thanks to this immense amount of data that we are able to access, we believe this partnership will further advance the property market in Dubai and increase transparency,” he added.

With the success of this partnership, in its second edition, Property Finder aims to work with other government entities in the UAE to create a country wide housing index that will prove to be the most effective for the real estate industry now and in the future.