Dubai’s real estate market moves fast. Really fast. But beneath all those gleaming towers and record-breaking transactions, there’s a challenge every real estate organization faces: how do you manage complexity, unify fragmented data, and make smarter decisions when everything is moving at breakneck speed?
We sat down with three leaders from Mustafa bin Abdul Latif (MBAL Group), a fourth-generation family office with over 100 years in the UAE real estate. They talked openly about what’s working, what’s not, and where the industry is heading. The insights? Universal. Whether you’re in Dubai, London, or managing 50 units or 5,000, you’ll recognize these challenges.
Fakhir Paracha, Chief Operating Officer, MBAL Group
Fakhir has been with MBAL Group for 28 years, overseeing everything from trading to real estate development. When we asked about his biggest challenge, the answer was immediate: real-time financial data.
“In any development environment, the biggest challenge is to get access to real-time data,” Fakhir said. “How fast you capture your cash outlays, how fast you can forecast revenue, spend, and expenses. That’s the biggest thing for me.”
MBAL Group uses multiple best-in-class software systems. But getting them to talk to each other? That’s the tricky part.
“Ideally, we would want everything at one point, one source. But unfortunately, that doesn’t happen. You have to plug and play, get a source from here, get a source from there, and then compile.”
The stakes are high. Sales forecasts feed cash flow projections. Those projections determine contractor payments. If one number is off, the whole thing unravels.
“You need a forecast. On the basis of your forecast, you plan your cash flows. If anything tips, the whole thing just goes haywire,” Fakhir explained. “You can’t shoot arrows in the air. You have to have substance to make sure everything is pulled together.”
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Omar Paul, CIO Advisory Consultant
Omar works with government and private sector leaders across the Middle East, helping them bridge the gap between business vision and technology. His take on real estate tech challenges? Three big ones.
“The biggest challenge I’ve seen is fragmented systems,” Omar said, using Dubai’s skyline as an example. “You’ve got all these beautiful towers. But unless they’re connected with roads and bridges, they’re just isolated buildings.”
Marketing systems that don’t talk to sales. Sales that don’t connect to finance. Leasing disconnected from maintenance. The result? Wasted money, missed opportunities, frustrated customers.
“If the marketing organization is marketing to millions of people and the sales organization is not connected with that data, they’re going to be selling to people that marketing is not marketing to.”
Omar’s argument is simple. Everything in real estate revolves around the customer. Marketing, sales, leasing, maintenance, payments, support. All customer interactions.
“A unified system allows you to transform from being department-centric to customer-centric.”
Omar cuts through the hype. Here’s what matters:
With Microsoft Copilot, you can literally talk to your data. No waiting for reports.
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Ali Akram, General Manager, Malco Capital (MBAL Group)
Ali heads MBAL’s investment division. His challenge? Getting the right information at the right time in a useful format.
“Usually, you have lots of unstructured data across the board,” Ali told us. “If it’s garbage in, then it’s garbage out.”
If data isn’t structured properly from the start, real-time access doesn’t help. You need systems that process information efficiently and reports configured for what management actually needs.
As a legacy family office, MBAL has systems that have worked for decades. But the market isn’t waiting.
“Things take time to change. Change is difficult. It needs to be managed,” Ali said. The key is modernizing without burning everything down.
What got Ali excited? AI as an executive assistant.
“Imagine heading into a meeting with a supplier, and you want to know everything that happened with this client for the last two years. Your purchases, discounts, rebates. All of that at your fingertips without going to your head of finance.”
That’s Microsoft Copilot. Ask a question conversationally, and get accurate answers immediately.
“The real value will come from upper management having access to real-time data they can query,” Ali explained.
Watch the full interview:
Three different leaders, three different roles. But they all came back to the same points:
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