Has Sharjah Become the UAE’s Real Estate Hotspot?

**Tim Elliott** (0:00)
This is the Morning Drive, it's Mira Business FM. Has Sharjah become the UAE's real estate hotspot? There's a question for you. Sharjah's property market hitting record highs, real estate sales surging 64%. I've got to get the figures right, to 65.6 billion dirhams. Foreign ownership reforms, lower living costs, and major infrastructure projects are fueling demand across the emirate. We have a new report out.
It's from Cavendish Maxwell, The Property Consultants, and the research manager is Ali Siddiqui, back for the second time to our studio. Good to see you.

**Ali Siddiqui** (0:37)
Thank you so much for having me, Tim.

**Tim Elliott** (0:38)
You're very welcome to the show. Let's start with the big picture, if we can. How has Sharjah moved from a secondary market to a primary investment destination in not a very long time?

**Ali Siddiqui** (0:52)
That's true, that's true. So the visa reforms initially came, not the visa reforms, the few hold reforms actually came in 2022 That's when Sharjah initially allowed foreign ownership. Prior to that, it was only allowed at leasehold level. So majority of the transactions or majority of the sales that were done in Sharjah specifically were done through Emiratis and a bit of GCC Nationals as well. Fast forward to 2022, that's when they had the hold reform and where they allowed foreign ownership.
Now, the split, if you were to compare it from 2019 onwards, 85% of the market was predominantly owned by Emiratis. Fast forward to, let's say, 2025, it's at 65%.
So your foreign ownership has brought in roughly around 30% investments from non-GCC Nationals.

**Tim Elliott** (1:43)
The thing about Sharjah is that came out as though there's an issue. I didn't mean it that way, but Dubai and Abu Dhabi get the headlines. They really dominate, don't they?
So this, I think this is a shift that kind of grabs the attention, perhaps more, particularly at a time like now, with things have been so uncertain. But what's driving this kind of growth, do you think? Really?

**Ali Siddiqui** (2:08)
It's a combination of factors. Now, what initially happened was that when the reforms came in, we saw a couple of developers launch freehold projects, and they performed really well, so they got sold out really fast. Now, developers saw that, fine, there's a demand in the Charger market, and that's when they started bringing on new projects. So we saw a record number of new launches in 2024 and 2025 as well, coupled with foreign investment that came in, and again, that was seen in the foreign direct investments that was seen for Charger. It had a record performance last year as well. So number of new launches increased, foreign investors started putting their money into Charger.
Domestic demand was already there in the market. It is just that on top of the domestic demand, we saw foreign investors putting their money into Charger.

**Tim Elliott** (2:55)
There's a few things that you've highlighted, foreign ownership reforms, competitive living costs, the infrastructure projects, as kind of the core catalysts. But just how significant has foreign ownership reform been? Can you put that into words?

**Ali Siddiqui** (3:13)
It has been significant. Like I said initially, 85% of the market in 2019 was Emirati. The remaining 15% was GCC nationals. Fast forward to let's say 2025, Emirati contribution has gone down to 68%.
GCC nationals are 2%, and the remaining 30% is non-Emirati, non-GCC. So as you might have seen from being zero in 2019, it has become almost 30% of the market.

**Tim Elliott** (3:45)
It's a lot. It's almost seven years. It's just no time at all, is it? See, we've got rising living costs in other parts of the UAE. Do you see, does the data point toward charge of becoming a go-to choice for working professionals? I mean, how much of this 64% surge is driven by end users rather than speculative investors?

**Ali Siddiqui** (4:08)
Now, the thing is that in terms of speculative demand, it's a bit difficult to put that specifically in Charger because Charger doesn't have any specific anchors. Now, for example, in Russell Khemah, you had the wind coming up, right? In Abu Dhabi, you have your Warner Brothers Park, you have your Disneyland coming up. Dubai has multiple attraction as well. Now, Charger specifically doesn't have that at the moment. If and when that comes up, that's a different story, but at the moment, it doesn't have that. And if 68% or 65% of your investment is coming in from Emirati, that basically says that you have strong domestic demand into the market. So people are actually staying in those units rather than just buying it. Fine, the off-plan segment is a different story altogether.