Dubai's property portals: owners, listing rules and broker costs

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Kooky

Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.

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A home for sale or rent in Dubai usually reaches its audience through a small number of privately owned listing sites. A broker pays to appear on them, a buyer or tenant searches them for nothing, and the Dubai Land Department, with its regulatory arm the Real Estate Regulatory Agency (RERA), decides what may be shown there. Three names recur in the department's own releases: Property Finder, Bayut and Dubizzle. The last two belong to one group.

This guide describes the position as read in October 2026. It sets out who owns those portals and what has been reported about their funding, the rules the department has laid on every online advertisement, what the portals say their verification badges check, the enforcement figures on record, the data tools the portals publish next to the department's own data, and what brokers have told the press about the cost of listing. Every figure is attributed to the release or the report that carries it, with its date. The press reports and company pages were read for this guide on 10 October 2026. The Dubai Land Department releases and pages cited were not re-read that day: their content is carried from the reading done for this magazine's earlier guides on the department's tools and data, and each is cited by its own title and date. Company statements are reported as statements. The guide ranks no portal and recommends none, and it does not repeat the department's permit procedure, which has its own guide.

Khaleej Times, 9 September 2025; Gulf News, 7 September 2022; Dubai Land Department release of 24 April 2025.

Three names, two groups

The Dubai Land Department treats three sites as the portals worth watching. Its release of 24 April 2025 on the monitoring of online advertisements names Property Finder, Dubizzle and Bayut, and no others.

Behind the three names stand two companies. Property Finder is one. Bayut and Dubizzle are the other: EnterpriseAM, a regional business publication, described Dubizzle Group on 14 October 2025 as the owner of two brands, Dubizzle for classifieds and Bayut as a property portal. A report credited to Khaleej Times and carried by Zawya refers to one executive as chief executive of "Bayut and Dubizzle Group MENA", which is the same pairing seen from inside the group.

Gulf News used a narrower frame on 1 June 2020, when it wrote of "the big two" and meant Bayut and Property Finder. The same report said listings had consolidated around the two top portals over the previous five years.

Property Finder: founder, investors and a figure nobody published

Khaleej Times reported on 9 September 2025 that Property Finder was founded in 2007 and is led by its founder and chief executive, Michael Lahyani. The same report gives the company's most recent funding: Permira and Blackstone Growth jointly invested US$525 million for what the report calls a "meaningful minority stake". Lahyani is quoted saying the partnership "represents a defining moment in our journey".

AGBI, a Gulf business publication, described the same transaction slightly differently. In its account, Property Finder secured US$525 million from funds advised by Permira, and funds managed by Blackstone Growth would also invest and take a meaningful minority stake, a phrase it attributes to Permira's statement. Both readings are given here because the two reports do not divide the sum between the two investors in the same way.

On the earlier investor the two reports agree. General Atlantic invested in 2018, and Khaleej Times says it continues to back the company. AGBI puts the 2018 investment at US$120 million and adds that General Atlantic has since sold part of its stake while keeping what the report calls a significant minority holding.

Three things are missing from both reports. Neither states a valuation for Property Finder. AGBI says no final ownership structure was disclosed. And neither gives the company's revenue or the number of brokers who pay it.

On plans, Khaleej Times reported that the new capital was meant for expansion into Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Qatar.

Dubizzle Group, Bayut and the listing set out in 2025

The second group has put more numbers into the public domain, because it prepared to sell shares.

According to EnterpriseAM's report of 14 October 2025, which cites the company's prospectus, Dubizzle Group Holdings planned to bring a 30.3 per cent stake to the Dubai Financial Market. The offer combined about 1.1 billion existing shares sold by shareholders with 196.1 million new shares. The report says the proceeds of the new shares were intended for acquisitions, future growth and settling the employee share ownership programme.

The largest shareholder, by that report, is Prosus, which holds 38 per cent through OLX. Prosus was to invest US$100 million in the offering. About 97 per cent of the shares on offer were reserved for qualified institutional and professional investors and about 3 per cent for local retail investors.

The timetable in the report ran as follows: subscription from 23 to 29 October 2025, final pricing and allocation on 30 October, and a first day of trading on or around 6 November 2025. The report also recalls an earlier attempt, a listing prepared for 2023 that did not happen.

The financial figures in that report are for the first half of 2025: revenue of US$133 million, up 26.6 per cent on a year earlier, and adjusted net income of US$14.03 million, up 50 per cent. Worked backwards as plain arithmetic, those growth rates imply revenue of about US$105 million (133 divided by 1.266) and adjusted net income of about US$9.35 million (14.03 divided by 1.5) for the first half of 2024. Adjusted net income was about 10.5 per cent of revenue in the 2025 half (14.03 divided by 133). The company said it did not plan to pay dividends in the near term.

Two money figures in the report are not the company's. A valuation of around US$2 billion is attributed to Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter and did not name them. An earlier estimate that the offering could raise US$500 million is attributed to IFR. Neither is a price set by the company.

The outcome of that offering was not established for this guide. The report of 14 October 2025 is the latest on the subject that was read, and it predates every date in the timetable. One further attempt to open a later press report failed. So this guide does not say whether the subscription was held, whether a price was set, or whether the shares began trading on the Dubai Financial Market, and everything in this section describes what was planned in October 2025, not what happened.

The permit behind every online listing

A portal in Dubai does not decide alone what it may display. The department's rules sit under each advertisement.

The base is the advertising permit, issued through the department's Trakheesi system. Its service page, as read for this magazine's earlier guide on the department's tools, lists electronic advertisements among the 14 kinds of promotion that need one, and prices a standard permit at AED 1,000 plus a knowledge and innovation fee of AED 20. That fee is paid to the department. It is separate from anything a portal charges, a distinction that matters when brokers speak of the cost of a listing.

Since April 2023 the permit has been visible to the reader. The department announced on 18 April 2023 a service called Madmoun, reached through Trakheesi, which issues a QR code for an advertisement permit, and required companies to show the code on their advertisements from 24 April 2023. Its release of 24 April 2025 restates the rule: a code on every real estate advertisement, visual or written.

The number of brokers who may advertise one home was limited before that. Gulf News reported on 7 September 2022 that directives issued the previous week capped a listing at three agents from October of that year, required permits obtained in advance from the department, and required listings to be removed once a property was sold. A page for agents published by Bayut on 12 May 2023 describes the same cap from the seller's side: from October 2022 a seller can generate at most three Trakheesi permits for online advertising, so no more than three agents can list one property, and the seller verifies the permit number.

The 2024 rules: removal deadlines and fines

Two further steps came in 2024, both reported by the press and not read in a department release for this guide.

The first is dated. According to a report credited to Khaleej Times and carried by Zawya, the department asked agents on 14 February 2024 to remove unavailable properties from digital platforms within three days, along with advertisements for properties no longer for sale or rent. The report gives a fine of AED 50,000 for agencies that did not comply and says several brokerages in Dubai and Abu Dhabi were fined, without a count.

The second is described by Gulf News in a report last updated on 27 August 2024. Earlier that year, it says, the department and RERA set steps an agent must complete before advertising a property for sale online, covering off-plan and ready homes alike, with forms to fill in and a cap on how many agents may list the same property. An agent must take a listing down within 90 days of the sale. The fine given is again AED 50,000, doubled for a repeat. On that basis a second breach would cost AED 100,000. Rental listings were not yet covered at that date, according to the report.

Gulf News also recorded the effect on the portals. Firas Al Msaddi, chief executive of the brokerage fam Properties, told the paper that about 1,000 properties for sale in one area had fallen to a few hundred. The report describes the drop across online channels as drastic and gives no percentage. Bayut put a number on its own side: in the Khaleej Times report carried by Zawya, the company said its inventory fell by more than 26 per cent after inaccurate listings were removed. That is the company's figure for its own site.

How the department watches the portals

Since 2024 the checking has been automated on the regulator's side. The department's release of 24 April 2025 reports on what it calls the AI-powered Real Estate Advertising Governance Platform, launched during the GITEX 2024 exhibition, which monitors advertisements on Property Finder, Dubizzle and Bayut. By the date of the release the platform had monitored more than 279,000 advertisements, and 29 per cent of the monitored listings had been automatically modified. Twenty-nine per cent of 279,000 is 80,910, so about 81,000 listings. The release does not say what a modification consists of or whether it counts as a violation.

The portals, for their part, were asked to connect to the department. The Khaleej Times report of 2024 says listing websites were encouraged to integrate their systems with the department's so that listings could be verified. Haider Khan, named in that report as chief executive of Bayut and Dubizzle Group MENA, said integration "will significantly increase trust amongst property seekers", and described the matching of details such as permit number, property type, price and location as the way a listing is confirmed as genuine.

Property Finder made a claim of its own on 18 November 2025. In a company release of that date it said it had reached 100 per cent compliance with the department's regulations, presented this as a first in the market, and said nightly automated sweeps removed thousands of duplicate or misleading listings a day. The release gives no exact count. Cherif Sleiman, the company's chief revenue officer, is quoted: "Every listing is verified at the source through real-time validation and AI-powered checks." The release also carries a statement of support from the chief executive of RERA. These are the company's descriptions of its own platform; the department's releases read for this guide do not repeat the 100 per cent figure.

Verification badges: what the portals say they check

The permit and its code are the regulator's test of an advertisement. The badges are the portals' own, and each is defined by the company that awards it.

Bayut's page for agents, published on 12 May 2023 and last modified on 6 November 2023, describes two. For the "Checked" badge, an agent uploads Form A, the title deed and the owner's passport or Emirates ID, and Bayut's team reviews the documents against Dubai Land Department data. For the "TruCheck" badge, the agent visits the property and photographs it in the company's mobile application, to show that the unit is in fact available. The page calls the two badges indicators of a listing's authenticity and availability. It states no fee for either, no period after which a badge lapses, and no order in which the steps must be taken.

Property Finder's release of November 2025 uses different words. It does not describe a badge, a list of documents or a validity period. It speaks of validation at the source and automated checks, in the words quoted above. The documents Property Finder asks of a broker for its own verified label were not on the page read, and are an open point.

The table shows why the two kinds of mark should not be confused. A permit and a code say that the regulator authorised an advertisement. A badge says that a company carried out a check it designed. Neither, on the pages read, is described as a guarantee of the price or the condition of a home.

How far a permit proves that an advertisement matches a property was still being argued in mid-2026. Gulf News, in a report last updated on 1 July 2026, carried a call from Salman Bin Ali, whom it describes as a prominent Dubai realtor, for portals to do more than confirm that a permit exists.

His proposals, as the paper reports them, are specific. Portals would cross-check permit information against the listing before it goes live, comparing property type, size, location, building name, project, unit details, permit validity and transaction type. Manual edits by brokers would be blocked, and misuse would meet escalating sanctions. He is quoted: "permit data should be tied to the actual property being marketed, not used as a general compliance reference."

The report names no portal and gives no figures. It does credit the 2024 rules with a significant reduction in duplicate listings. It is one professional's published view, not a finding about any company.

How portals charge brokers, as far as the press records it

None of the company pages or releases read for this guide prints a price list. What is on record about charging comes from press reports in which brokers describe their bills.

Those reports describe a charge per listing. Gulf News wrote on 7 September 2022 that rental listing advertisements at leading portals, which it did not name, had risen from AED 60 to between AED 300 and AED 400 each. A broker quoted in the same report said portals "will still keep giving bulk discounts", which points to prices that fall with volume. In the 2020 report Al Msaddi spoke of packages, saying he expected the new entrants to offer free ones.

Beyond that the sources are silent. Whether a portal sells subscriptions, credits or paid placement, and at what price, is not stated in anything read for this guide, and neither company's release mentions pricing.

A portal's price list is the one document missing from the public record: what is known about the cost of a listing comes from brokers who spoke to the press.

What brokers have said about the cost

Three moments stand out in the reports, and they are not the same complaint.

In June 2020, Gulf News reported that Dubai agencies had revived plans for two jointly owned portals, with about 13 agencies behind the idea by the paper's count. Al Msaddi told the paper that "advertising fees on the dominant property portals have gone up by 20 times in the past 10 years". The report adds that several brokers had once pulled their listings from Property Finder.

In September 2022 the complaint was tied to regulation. With the cap of three agents per property about to apply, Gulf News reported that some leading portals had raised rates or planned to. Mohammad Imran Khan, an estate agent at Atomic Properties, said the increases were three to four times the previous week's rates and that this "definitely impacts" lead generation. The report is not consistent with itself on the size: its headline speaks of increases of 30 to 40 per cent, its text of three to four times, and its one concrete example, AED 60 rising to AED 300 or AED 400, is a multiple of 5 to about 6.7. All three are given here as the paper printed them.

In August 2024, after the new listing rules, Gulf News reported that some portals had raised listing tariffs to offset lower traffic. An unnamed agent said the largest two or three portals could absorb the change while smaller ones would struggle, and the paper reported talk of consolidation.

A worked example shows what the 2022 figures would mean for one office. Assume a brokerage carries 50 rental listings, pays the per-listing rate the paper quotes, and receives no bulk discount. At AED 60 a listing the bill is AED 3,000 (50 times 60). At AED 300 it is AED 15,000, and at AED 400 it is AED 20,000. The assumption of no discount is the weak point, since the same report says discounts continued, so the example marks an upper bound for that rate and not a typical bill. None of these sums includes the department's own permit fee, which is charged separately.

Portal data tools and the department's own data

Both portal groups publish market data, and most of it starts in the department's records.

Bayut runs a page called Dubai Transactions. As read in October 2026, it lists sale transactions in Dubai over the last 12 months, with a filter for the last month, and its description says the data is sourced directly from the Dubai Land Department. The page shows sales only. The site's navigation also lists a price index called Property Prices, a Trends page and an estimate tool called TruEstimate. The transactions page does not say how often it is updated and carries no note on accuracy.

Property Finder's link to official data is of another kind: it is a partner in the department's index. A department release of 8 June 2020 describes Mo'asher as Dubai's official sales price index, produced by the department in partnership with Property Finder. The department's Residential Rental Performance Index page likewise names Property Finder as its partner. The October 2023 edition of Mo'asher attributes the split of sales between apartments, about 87 per cent, and villas and townhouses, about 13 per cent, to Property Finder data. The company's own data products were not on the pages read for this guide.

The department's own data differs from a portal page in three ways that can be read from its site. The first is scope: its open data page, as read for this magazine's earlier guide on the department's data, offers nine datasets, namely transactions, rents, projects, valuations, land, buildings, units, brokers and developers, and its transactions search covers sales, mortgages and gifts, where the Bayut page read covers sales. The second is period: the department's search asks for a start and an end date chosen by the user, where the portal page shows a rolling 12 months. The third is status. A rent increase at renewal is governed by the department's Smart Rental Index, as its release of 16 February 2025 sets out, and no portal estimate takes its place. Even the official index carries a caution: the Mo'asher edition of October 2023 says the index should not be used for commercial purposes such as pricing or investment decisions.

What the sources leave open

Several points a reader may expect are not settled by the pages and reports read for this guide.

• The outcome of the Dubizzle Group offering. Not established. The EnterpriseAM report of 14 October 2025 gives a timetable ending in a first trading day on or around 6 November 2025. No report dated after it was read, so whether the listing went ahead, was postponed or was withdrawn is not stated here.
• Property Finder's valuation and ownership split. Neither report of the September 2025 investment states them.
• Portal price lists. No company page read gives the price of a listing, a package or a badge.
• Property Finder's verification documents. The company's release speaks of validation at the source and does not list what a broker must supply.
• Department material not re-read. The department's releases of 8 June 2020, 18 April 2023, 16 February 2025 and 24 April 2025, its October 2023 index edition and its permit, open data and rental index pages are cited from this magazine's earlier reading of them, not from a reading on 10 October 2026.
• Fines on portals. The AED 50,000 fine in the press reports falls on agents and agencies. No report read gives a penalty applied to a portal.
• What an automated modification is. The department reports that 29 per cent of monitored listings were modified and does not describe the change.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

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