Maldives turn to ‘the man who built Dubai’ for $20bn development

• Eagle Hills and Emaar to run $20bn project
• Off-plan sales model
• Aimed at wealthy foreigners

The Maldives government has chosen Mohamed Alabbar, the man whose companies built Downtown Dubai and the Burj Khalifa, to preside over a real estate push. A $20 billion “Maldives Waterfront and Marina” project will be delivered by Alabbar’s Eagle Hills and Emaar companies, targeting rich foreigners as buyers.

Eagle Hills, the private developer of which Alabbar is chairman, signed commercial terms with the Maldives government on Monday.

The project is the Maldives’ first major push into Dubai-style development and adds to an already sizeable tourism estate. It will use 500 hectares of reclaimed land at Ras Malé, two-and-a-half times the size of Downtown Dubai.

Abdulla Muththalib, the Maldives’ minister of infrastructure, said the country needed “a second engine besides tourism”. His answer is Dubai’s off-plan model: homes sold before they are built, with every sale settled through escrow accounts, where investors’ money is ringfenced.

The Maldives, an archipelago of nearly 1,200 islands with a population of 500,000, is home to more than 1,300 tourism establishments. Most of these are guest houses, followed by resorts, according to the ministry of tourism and civil aviation cited by the state broadcaster.

In the case of this latest development, the state will take 10 percent of commercial sales revenue and a 4 percent fee on every transaction, resales included, Muththalib said at the signing. There will be no tax holidays or exemptions.

Timelines differ. Muththalib told AGBI build-out will take five to six years if sales are strong and no more than 10 if demand is weaker. The masterplan is still in draft and a definitive agreement due by the end of October. Alabbar told AGBI projects of this size take 10 to 15 years, though “in Dubai, we’ve done a lot in seven years”.

The number of units to be built in the new development was not mentioned, nor price tags. They are likely to be high-end units as the Maldivian government said it intends to introduce branded homes, which in Dubai command a 30 percent premium.

Buyers obtain leasehold, not freehold, for up to 99 years, renewing on each sale or inheritance, according to a statement.

Asked by AGBI whether that would deter buyers, Muththalib said: “There will be a mechanism where the people will not lose the property value going forward.”

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He said buyers would be high-net-worth individuals spending summer and winter holidays on the islands but did not name the countries from which he expected them to originate.

Alabbar said prospective purchasers “buy multiple properties” in cities including Dubai, London and Singapore, and that Dubai residents were likely buyers.

Eagle Hills’ record abroad is mixed. Belgrade Waterfront, owned 68 percent by Eagle Hills and 32 percent by the Serbian state, has finished 34 of 60 buildings launched, according to the project’s website. But in February 2025, Hungary’s government said Eagle Hills would not proceed with a large scheme called Grand Budapest.

In Dubai, Emaar Development sold AED22.4 billion ($6 billion) of property in the first half, down 45 percent. Even so, profit rose 43 percent on a backlog of sold homes worth nearly $35 billion.

Emaar’s stock is down 18.5 percent in the year to date.