AI to automate Dubai’s rental sector as 1.38 million contracts recorded in 2025
Dubai processed 1.38 million tenancy contracts worth Dh126.33 billion in 2025, up six percent annually, according to the Dubai Land Department. The city’s population crossed four million last year, driving demand for sufficient real estate. Property consultancy Savills expects about 170,000 new homes to complete in Dubai in 2026, almost nine in ten of them apartments.
The rapid adoption of AI in the region is extending to the rental sector, which will ease operations in leasing and communications. Seed Group, under The Private Office of Sheikh Saeed bin Ahmed Al Maktoum, has partnered with London-based AI firm VerbaFlo to support investors and operators across the UAE by driving revenue and automate operational workflows in rentals.
Seed Group will connect VerbaFlo’s technology with local property owners, developers and operators in the UAE, and its support will extend to opportunities elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa.
VerbaFlo answers enquiries, books viewings and handles resident communications for more than 50 operators, across 300,000 units in 12 countries, resolving 90 percent of enquiries without human involvement.
The AI company gives residents an instant answer at any hour, which helps fill buildings quicker, keep tenants happier and automates leasing, rent collection and renewals. It takes routine admin off onsite teams so they can focus on prospect conversion and resident experience. This creates stickier tenants and because every conversation is captured and analysed, it can offer residential investors – including private equity firms like Blackstone, KKR and Apollo – better visibility on the true value of their assets by understanding enquiry demand and conversion, addressable market size, renewal intent, maintenance trends and resident sentiment, often before these show up in occupancy and revenue figures.
Hisham Al Gurg, CEO of Seed Group and The Private Office of Sheikh Saeed bin Ahmed Al Maktoum, said, “Real estate is one of the world’s largest asset classes and one of the last to automate its operations. VerbaFlo has quickly become a market-leader, working with global investors. The ability to answer every enquiry, in any language, at any hour, is critical for the UAE’s thriving, multi-cultural economy. We see a huge opportunity to integrate VerbaFlo into our business networks to help it build a sustainable business that supports our commitment to increase inward investment across the region.”
As more people rent and find apartments via their phones, automation brings many direct benefits. Two-thirds of resident enquiries arrive outside office hours, when most buildings have nobody to answer them. VerbaFlo’s AI agents reply around the clock across phone, email, web chat and WhatsApp in more than 200 languages, qualify each lead, book the viewing and chase the follow-up, so buildings let faster. The same agents handle maintenance requests, renewals, rent reminders and payments, so tenants stay longer and arrears fall.
Because every exchange sits in one record, connected to systems like Yardi and Entrata, owners can see how each building is performing and why, through the platform’s analytics layer, VerbaIQ. Faster lettings, longer tenancies, better resident experience and lower operating costs make buildings more profitable and drive-up asset value.
Sayantan Biswas, founder and chief executive of VerbaFlo, said, “A single tower in the Gulf can house residents of dozens of nationalities, and a message has to land correctly in whichever language it arrives. VerbaFlo already works in more than 200 languages, so this is ground we know. The UAE combines one of the world’s most international resident populations, a rental sector that is professionalising fast and a clear national ambition to bring AI into property services. Our partnership with Seed Group brings us the relationships and local understanding that matter most, and we see the UAE as the opening chapter of a longer Gulf story.”
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