Quick answer: Our Dubai real estate websites study checked 100 live brokerage sites on 20 October 2026. Almost all get the basics right: every one loads over HTTPS and 98 suit phones. Few show what buyers and the DLD look for: only 15 have a real Arabic version, 14 show the agency’s licence number, and just 10 of 38 listing pages showed a permit number or DLD QR code.
Dubai has thousands of licensed brokerages, and almost all of them list on the same portals. Their own websites are where they can stand apart, yet nobody had counted what those sites actually offer. So we took a random sample from Property Finder’s public broker directory for Dubai, found each agency’s own website and checked 100 of them for the things a buyer, a landlord and the Dubai Land Department look for: permit numbers on listings, an Arabic version, a WhatsApp button, agent profiles, the agency’s licence number and more. Here is what they get right, where they fall short, and the raw data.
Key takeaways
- The technical basics are solved: 100 of 100 sites use HTTPS and 98 have a mobile viewport.
- Contact is easy on most sites: 60 offer WhatsApp and 64 a tap-to-call link, but 14 offer no WhatsApp, phone link or enquiry form at all.
- Only 38 sites have listing pages we could open, and 28 of those showed neither a permit number nor a QR code, though DLD rules cover online adverts.
- Arabic is the biggest gap: 15 sites have a real Arabic version and 6 more rely on a translation widget.
- Agencies with more agents score higher on average, 6.6 to 6.8 out of 10 against 4.9 for the smallest.
Sources: OXEDGE study of 100 Dubai broker websites, 20 October 2026 (download the data as CSV) · Dubai Land Department, brokerage sector in 2025, 9 March 2026
How we ran the Dubai real estate websites study
The Dubai Land Department counted 9,785 registered brokerage offices and 32,294 registered brokers at the end of 2025, with brokers handling 96,440 transactions that year. The DLD’s own broker search sits behind a captcha, so we started from a public list: Property Finder’s Dubai broker directory, which showed 3,924 brokers on the day.
Sources: Dubai Land Department, 9 March 2026 · Property Finder, Find a broker, Dubai, checked 20 October 2026
How we did this: On 20 October 2026 we read 12 randomly chosen pages (fixed seed) of Property Finder’s public Dubai broker directory, which gave 240 brokerages. Each agency’s website came from the business email domain it lists there. We opened the domains in random order with plain HTTP (curl, a desktop Chrome user agent, at most four requests at a time, 15 seconds each) and kept the first 100 live sites that named the agency, checking each homepage, its contact page and one listing page linked from it. No JavaScript was run, so anything added only in the browser is not counted; 6 sites delivered almost no text without it. Areas come from the office address on Property Finder.
That is itself a finding: 61 of the 240 brokerages, about one in four, list a Gmail, Hotmail or similar address on the portal. Of the 137 business domains we opened, 20 returned no page, 10 showed a placeholder such as “under construction” and 7 belonged to another business.
Source: OXEDGE study of 100 Dubai broker websites, 20 October 2026 (CSV), sampled from Property Finder’s Dubai broker directory
The scorecard: what 100 broker websites show
We scored each site on ten checks that matter to someone choosing an agency: HTTPS, a mobile viewport, an Arabic version, WhatsApp, a tap-to-call link, listing pages, agent profiles, the licence number, schema markup and a privacy policy link. The average was 5.3 out of 10 and the median 5.5. Thirteen sites scored 8 or more, one scored a full 10, and 31 scored 4 or less.
Sites passing each check, out of 100. Hover or tap a bar. Source: OXEDGE study, 20 October 2026 (CSV)
| Check | What counted as a pass | Sites passing |
|---|---|---|
| Secure connection | The homepage loads over HTTPS | 100 |
| Mobile layout | A mobile viewport tag in the page | 98 |
| Tap to call | A tel: link on the homepage | 64 |
| Enquiry form | A form with an email, phone or message field | 61 |
| WhatsApp contact | A WhatsApp link (53) or a WhatsApp chat button (7) | 60 |
| Schema markup | Structured data in the page | 60 |
| Privacy policy | A link to a privacy page from the homepage | 51 |
| Listing pages | A property page with price and size we could reach | 38 |
| Agent profiles | A link to an agents or team page | 34 |
| Arabic version | An Arabic page, link or hreflang tag | 15 |
| Licence number | The agency’s ORN on the homepage or contact page | 14 |
| Permit on listings | A permit number or QR code on the listing page we opened | 10 of 38 |
Source: OXEDGE study, 20 October 2026. The licence number checked is the one Property Finder shows for each agency, plus any “ORN” or “RERA” label followed by a number.
What most agencies get right
Every site loaded over HTTPS and 98 had a mobile viewport, which matters in a country where phones carried 60.04 per cent of web traffic in September 2026.
Source: StatCounter, desktop vs mobile vs tablet market share in the UAE, September 2026; timing from the OXEDGE study
Contact routes are common too. Sixty sites offer WhatsApp, 64 a tap-to-call link and 61 an enquiry form, and 71 link to Instagram. Most run on familiar platforms, 55 on WordPress and 11 on Next.js, so most fixes below need no rebuild. Sixty sites carry some schema markup, the structured data search engines read, though only 16 use the RealEstateAgent type made for them.
The weak spot: 14 sites offer no WhatsApp, phone link or enquiry form on the homepage. For a business whose income starts with an enquiry, every site should clear this bar.
For a business whose income starts with an enquiry, every site should clear this bar.
Where most fall short: permits, licence numbers and Arabic
Permit numbers and QR codes on listings
Only 38 of the 100 sites had a property page we could open from the homepage or its listings page. On those 38 pages, 7 showed permit wording and 5 a QR code, 10 pages in all. The other 28 showed neither. Some sites may show the permit in an image or a script our plain request did not see, so read this as what the page delivers as text.
The rules: Brokerage in Dubai is regulated by the Real Estate Regulatory Agency (RERA) of the Dubai Land Department under UAE Bylaw No. 85 of 2006 regulating the Real Estate Brokers Register in Dubai. RERA’s Real Estate Brokerage Practice Guide (second edition, November 2024) says brokerages must obtain a permit through the Trakheesi system for any real estate advertisement or marketing material, electronic adverts included, and that the permit number must be displayed on the ad. The DLD lists the permit fee at AED 1,000 plus a AED 20 Knowledge and Innovation fee. In April 2025 it said all real estate companies must display the Madmoun QR code on all real estate advertisements. This is general guidance, not legal advice.
Sources: RERA, Real Estate Brokerage Practice Guide, November 2024 (PDF) · DLD, Real Estate Ad Permit service · DLD, 24 April 2025
The DLD enforces this. In July 2024 it reported fining 256 brokers over six months for breaking advertising conditions, after 1,530 inspections of adverts, and said its checks look for a QR code that meets the specification, scans and matches the authorised advert. Its AI advertising platform had monitored more than 279,000 portal adverts by April 2025.
Sources: DLD, 17 July 2024 · DLD, 24 April 2025
The agency’s licence number
Only 14 sites showed the agency’s licence number, the ORN listed on Property Finder, on the homepage or contact page. It costs nothing to add to a footer and gives a careful client a number to check against the DLD register.
Arabic
Fifteen sites have a real Arabic version, found through an Arabic page, a language link or an hreflang tag. Six more rely on a machine translation widget, which we did not count. Dubai’s buyers are international: the emirate recorded about 193,100 investors in 2025, and residents made up 56.6 per cent of them. An agency that serves Gulf buyers or Arabic-speaking owners in English only is leaving that audience to the portals.
Source: Dubai Media Office, 12 January 2026; Arabic counts from the OXEDGE study
Listings and agent profiles: thin on most sites
A portal shows an agency’s stock next to its competitors; its own site is the one place to show it alone. Yet 62 of the 100 sites had no listing page we could reach from the homepage, and 22 of those had a listings section that showed no property pages to a plain request. Agent profiles are rarer still: 34 sites link to an agents or team page, and 20 sites with live listing pages have no agent page at all.
A page per agent with languages, areas and current listings keeps buyers on the agency’s site and the agent’s reputation attached to the agency. If you are planning a site with live listings, our guide to building a property platform in Dubai covers feeds, map search and permits in detail.
Does agency size change the score?
Yes, but less than you might expect. We grouped sites by the number of agents each agency shows on Property Finder. The 77 agencies with one to five agents averaged 4.9 out of 10; agencies with 6 to 20 agents averaged 6.8, and those with more than 20 averaged 6.6. Bigger agencies are far more likely to have agent pages, schema and a privacy link, but they are no better at showing their licence number.
| Agents on Property Finder | Sites | Average score | Arabic | Listing pages | Agent profiles | Licence number | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| One to five agents | 77 | 4.9 | 12% | 57% | 32% | 26% | 13% |
| 6 to 20 agents | 12 | 6.8 | 25% | 67% | 58% | 67% | 25% |
| More than 20 agents | 11 | 6.6 | 27% | 73% | 55% | 55% | 9% |
Source: OXEDGE study, 20 October 2026. Agent counts as shown on Property Finder. The two larger groups are small, so treat their percentages as indicative.
Listing volume shows the same pattern: agencies with up to 25 live listings on Property Finder averaged 4.6, those with 101 to 500 averaged 7.2. Size buys a better website, not a complete one.
Results by area
Business Bay dominates the sample: 27 of the 100 agencies give an office address there, against seven in Al Barsha and six in Barsha Heights. The map shows the average score for each area with at least two sites in the sample. Seventeen agencies had an address we could not place in an area, and ten areas had only one site, so they are left off the map.
With four sites or fewer in most areas, the spread says more about individual agencies than neighbourhoods. No area stands out as getting websites right.
How to close the gaps: a fix list for your broker website
Most of these gaps are template and content changes, not rebuilds, and the ones touching DLD rules come first. A clear, permit-compliant real estate website for a Dubai brokerage does not need to match a portal on volume; it needs to pass these checks.
How OXEDGE does this
We audit a brokerage’s site against the same ten checks, then fix the gaps in order of risk.
- A check of every listing template for the Trakheesi permit number and the QR code, fed from your CRM.
- An Arabic version written for Gulf readers, with hreflang tags, not a translation widget.
- Agent pages with languages, areas and live listings, plus the agency’s licence number in the footer.
- A WhatsApp, call and form route on every page, logged to your CRM so no enquiry is lost.
| Gap | Sites with the gap | First fix |
|---|---|---|
| Permit or QR missing | 28 of 38 listing pages | Add the permit number and QR code to the listing template, pulled from the listing record |
| No licence number | 86 of 100 | Put the ORN in the footer and on the contact page |
| No Arabic version | 85 of 100 | Start with Arabic home, contact and top area pages, written by a person |
| No agent pages | 66 of 100 | One page per agent with languages, areas and listings |
| No listing pages | 62 of 100 | Show live stock from your CRM feed, or link clearly to your portal profile |
| No WhatsApp route | 40 of 100 | A WhatsApp button that opens a chat with a monitored number |
| No privacy link | 49 of 100 | A privacy policy page linked from the footer and every form |
Source: OXEDGE study, 20 October 2026 (CSV). The fixes reflect OXEDGE’s view of the quickest route to a pass.
The privacy link is more than good manners. The UAE’s federal personal data protection law, Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021, has been in force since 2 January 2022, and every enquiry form collects personal data. A visible policy is the simplest first step.
Source: UAE Government portal, data protection laws
Start with the listing template. One change to the template puts the permit number and QR code on every listing at once.
One change to the template puts the permit number and QR code on every listing at once.
Our work
Vent: a photo-first property search website
OXEDGE designed the Vent website in 2024 for desktop, tablet and mobile: a three-field home search by location, property type and budget, photo-led listings with filter and sort, detailed property pages, an Agents section in the menu and sign-in with Google or Apple.
Questions UAE buyers ask
Do listings on our own website need a DLD permit?
Yes. RERA’s practice guide requires a Trakheesi permit for any real estate advert or marketing material, electronic adverts included, with the permit number shown, and the DLD requires the QR code on all adverts.
Is a translation widget enough for Arabic?
We did not count it. Widgets translate by machine and do not give search engines a separate Arabic page to index.
Why did you use Property Finder’s directory?
It is public, lists each brokerage’s office address and licence number, and can be read with plain requests. The DLD’s broker search needs a captcha.
Can we use the data?
Yes. The CSV lists every site with each result. Please cite OXEDGE and the date, 20 October 2026.
Can you score our website?
Yes. Send us your URL and we run the same checks and send the result with fixes in order.
Work with OXEDGE
Get the full study and your own website score.
Send us your agency’s website and we will score it against the same ten checks as the 100 sites in this study, plus the permit check on your listing pages. You get the full results, your score and a short list of fixes in order of risk.
