Blackstone, Permira Invest in Dubai Property Finder Service

Blackstone and Permira are betting big on Dubai’s red-hot property market.

The private equity giants are buying a combined $525 million stake in Middle Eastern real estate classifieds company Property Finder, the Financial Times reported. The deal puts the value of the listing platform, held by private equity firm General Atlantic, at $2 billion.

London-based Permira is the lead investor on the deal, sinking $350 million into Property Finder. The firm has invested in online classifieds companies in other countries.

Property Finder’s main business is in the United Arab Emirates. Dubai is in the midst of a real estate run — its third such streak since the emirate opened to foreign investment in the early 2000s. In the past six years, average sales prices per square foot have increased 68 percent, according to Reidin data cited by the Financial Times.

The growth has largely been driven by the expanding population in the UAE, Property Finder founder Michael Lahyani told the outlet. This past month, Dubai’s population crossed more than 4 million people, marking a 20 percent increase in six years.

Lahyani predicts real estate values in Dubai would similarly increase more than 20 percent per year “for another year or two” before settling on a “more sustainable number.”

While some fear that Dubai’s growing bubble could burst, as it has in the past, Lahyani is more confident in the future of the local market. “The property market is in a very different shape,” he said. “It is not leveraged like it was back in the day.”

In the first half of this year, Dubai’s land department recorded 125,538 real estate transactions, a 26 percent increase over the same period in 2024. Permira and Blackstone cited high rental yields and low vacancies in Dubai’s real estate market, noting that classifieds businesses tend to perform well even in real estate slumps.

Classifieds businesses like Property Finder can grow in the UAE as they’re used by relatively fewer clients than in other markets, Permira partner David Erlong told the Financial Times. Currently, Property Finder also operates in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain.

— Chris Malone Méndez