Contribution by Federico Marangoni, Founder & CEO, EMFIS
Dubai recorded AED 917bn in real estate transactions in 2025, the highest deal value in the emirate’s history (Dubai Land Department, 2025).
Up to 120,000 new residential units are expected to be delivered in 2026 according to Fitch Ratings into a market where annual price appreciation is forecast to moderate significantly, from the 12 to 22 per cent growth recorded in 2024 to 2025 as per Cushman and Wakefield Core, 2026.
In a market of this scale and this supply, the question every developer should be asking is not whether their project will sell. It is whether it will hold its value against everything arriving behind it, and whether the buildings carrying their name will be remembered for the standard they set or the standard they settled for. In a maturing market, reputation is built not in the boom, but in what endures after it.
The answer already exists in the data. After reviewing over 300 academic, peer-reviewed, and independent studies, the Global Wellness Institute found that wellness-focused residential properties command a price premium of 10 to 25% over conventional equivalents, while commercial buildings demonstrate a 4.4 to 7.7% rental premium per square foot according to the Global Wellness Institute, 2025. Developers who understood this early moved first.
Electromagnetic hygiene credentials
In eight countries across Europe and the Middle East, including here in the UAE, a number of developers have already begun integrating electromagnetic hygiene credentials into their buildings at design phase, treating it not as a wellness amenity but as a foundational building standard that no competitor can claim without the same independently verified process. That is what defensible differentiation looks like.
This shift is not confined to any single market. It is a global recalibration of what buyers expect a building to do for them, and it is moving faster than most development pipelines have yet responded to. The gap between what buyers want and what the market is comprehensively delivering represents an opportunity for savvy developers.
In the UAE and Saudi Arabia that gap is particularly striking. Wellness real estate already accounts for more than 12% of all construction across both countries, with 555,000 wellness-focused residential units in the pipeline according to Global Wellness Institute, 2026).
Wellness real estate market
The UAE’s wellness real estate market has grown from US$ 3.3bn in 2017 to US$ 14.6bn in 2025. And yet the majority of what is being marketed as wellness real estate in this region remains uncertified, unmeasured, and built around amenities rather than standards. A gym and a pool do not constitute a wellness building. They constitute a wellness pitch.
Electromagnetic exposure belongs in that same category. The pollution generated by every building’s wiring, Wi-Fi networks, and connected infrastructure is present in every room, every hour, for the lifetime of the structure. It is measurable, it is addressable at design or renovation phase, and it is the one wellness feature that makes the building future-proof.
The 10 to 25% wellness premium does not belong to the buildings with the longest amenity list (GWI 2025). It belongs to the ones with the most defensible credentials. In a market delivering 120,000 units in a single year, that distinction is not a positioning strategy. It is the difference between a development that commands the next cycle and one that gets absorbed by it.
(Federico Marangoni is Founder & CEO of EMFIS (Electromagnetic Field International Standard UAE), the world’s leading low-EMF building certification body, founded on research at EPFL and recognised by Switzerland’s national standardisation body. EMFIS recently opened its GCC showroom in the UAE.)
