Real estate in Dubai is shifting from being viewed mainly as a final investment destination to serving as a bridge for capital. Investors are increasingly using property to move money between opportunities, manage timing and liquidity, and close short-term financing gaps while pursuing longer-term strategies. This is happening as regulators tighten oversight of advisory firms and cross-border capital into the Gulf increases, raising questions about how risks are structured and shared.
Firms such as Hedge & Sachs, a Dubai-based investment and advisory platform regulated by the UAE Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA), are promoting “asset-linked” strategies that tie returns to tangible sectors, such as real estate, rather than complex synthetic products. For investors, the key question is less about how high prices can rise and more about how effectively real estate can serve as a financing bridge, and who sets the terms.
A New Cycle in Dubai Real Estate
Dubai’s property market entered 2025 on a different footing than prior booms. Instead of focusing solely on headline-grabbing towers, more capital is now flowing into structured deals, milestone-based funding, and cross-border mandates that rely on real estate as collateral. Developers and investors, facing rapid project timelines and shifting demand for mid-market and premium housing, have turned to bridge loans and private capital to secure plots, lock in permits, and advance construction while awaiting longer-term financing.
Bridge financing has moved into the mainstream as a way to smooth the time mismatch between when projects must progress and when balance sheets can support them. Short-term loans allow sponsors to seize land or pre-commit to off-plan inventories, often with terms tied directly to the underlying property’s progress and saleability rather than abstract credit profiles. In this model, real estate is not just the prize at the end of the transaction; it is the mechanism that makes the transaction possible.
For global investors, property-backed structures in Dubai have become an alternative to low-yield fixed income and volatile equities. Hedge & Sachs and similar platforms have responded by threading real estate exposure into broader multi-asset strategies, offering portfolios in which a property-linked note or income stream sits alongside forex plays and global funds, within a regulatory framework that now includes SCA oversight.
Real Estate as a Bridge, and Its Risks
In the UAE, finance specialists increasingly describe bridge loans as the link between opportunity and long-term capital, allowing developers to act when a prime site appears rather than when a bank’s cycle permits. A developer who identifies a parcel in Dubai South or near a new transport hub may have weeks, not months, to commit; a bridge facility backed by the property itself can close that gap.
The evolution of advisory firms mirrors that logic. Hedge & Sachs has oriented some of its offerings around asset-linked investments, including real estate initiatives that aim to give investors clearer visibility into the underlying assets. Its subsidiaries and partnerships have directed clients toward prominent Dubai properties, including premium residential projects such as the ARMAS development in Dubai South, often structuring exposure so that property performance directly informs returns.
Yet the bridge can carry risk in both directions. Short-term funding that depends on rapid sales or refinancing can magnify stress if sentiment cools or if regulatory changes slow approvals. That is one reason the SCA’s licensing of advisory firms, including Hedge & Sachs, has drawn attention: the license acknowledges the complexity of the products on offer and the potential systemic implications if property-backed instruments proliferate without guardrails.
Regulation, Transparency, and a Quieter Tension
Regulation has arrived in Dubai as alternative investments have moved to the center of many wealth strategies. Hedge & Sachs’ SCA license was treated internally as both a milestone and a constraint: a badge of credibility that also narrows the room for improvisation. The firm’s leadership has presented the approval as validation of its risk controls and governance, arguing that such oversight is now a prerequisite for attracting sophisticated institutional mandates.
Asset-linked strategies sit at the core of the platform, encompassing real estate, forex-linked structures, and multi-asset global funds built through international vehicles. For clients, tying performance to real sectors like property is framed as offering a clearer view of what drives returns compared with opaque structured notes or more exotic products.
To Noorina Saifulla, a spokesperson for the firm, the deeper issue is how investors perceive their own exposure. “When clients tell us they are ‘heavily in real estate,’ what they usually mean is they own an apartment and some REIT units,” she said. “The surprising part is that the real estate that actually stabilizes their portfolio is often invisible to them; it sits behind a bridge facility or an asset-linked fund they think of as ‘fixed income,’ even though it lives and breathes with the Dubai skyline.”
The more real estate is used as a bridge, the more important it becomes to ask whether the bridge is being maintained, not just how much traffic it can carry. Investors, regulators, and firms like Hedge & Sachs are effectively writing new rules for an old asset class that has taken on a new role. As the Dubai real estate cycle continues, the test is whether property can safely serve as a bridge in financing, a way to move capital between opportunities without losing it in the gaps.
