The 14 developers with more than three registered projects
Ranked by how many projects they hold on the register. The escrow column is the one worth reading: it counts how many of those projects have an open escrow account, which is the account a developer must have before it can lawfully take your money.
Value is what the Land Department records for the projects, not sales or revenue.
Nakheel appearing with one project is not an error. This counts projects currently on the register, not everything a developer has ever built. A master developer with a long completed portfolio can hold very little live stock.
| Developer | Projects | Escrow open | Recorded value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emaar | 38 | 38 of 38 | AED 21.2bn |
| Binghatti | 35 | 32 of 35 | AED 17.7bn |
| Imtiaz | 20 | 20 of 20 | AED 2.3bn |
| DAMAC | 16 | 16 of 16 | AED 3.6bn |
| Azizi | 13 | 12 of 13 | AED 2.5bn |
| Ellington | 8 | 7 of 8 | AED 2.7bn |
| Reportage | 7 | 6 of 7 | AED 0.6bn |
| Danube | 7 | 7 of 7 | AED 4.3bn |
| Nshama | 6 | 5 of 6 | AED 1.1bn |
| Sobha | 5 | 5 of 5 | AED 5.9bn |
| Select Group | 4 | 4 of 4 | AED 2.5bn |
| Arada | 3 | 3 of 3 | AED 2.6bn |
| Tiger Properties | 3 | 3 of 3 | AED 0.3bn |
| Nakheel | 1 | 1 of 1 | AED 0.6bn |
What the escrow column means, and what it does not
Across the whole register, 605 of 713 projects have an open escrow account — about 85 per cent. The gaps are concentrated in projects the register still marks as pending, which means registered but not yet under way.
Binghatti's three without escrow are Tilal Binghatti, Binghatti Square 1 and Binghatti Square 3, and all three are pending. Azizi's one is Jadaf Beach Oasis, also pending. That is the normal sequence: a project is registered, then the escrow account opens before selling begins. A pending project with no escrow is not a warning sign on its own.
What it does mean is that those specific projects cannot lawfully take your money yet. If you are being sold one of them today, that is worth a question.
The number that actually matters: 308 developers with one project
418 companies hold projects on the register. 308 of them — almost three in four — hold exactly one.
That is the shape of the Dubai off-plan market and it rarely appears in a "top developers" article, because a list of ten names implies the other 408 are a rounding error. They are not. They are most of the market, and most of the risk.
A company with one project has no delivery record. Not a bad one — none at all. There is nothing to check, no handed-over building to go and look at, no previous buyers to ask. Whether that matters to you depends on price, escrow and how much of your money is at stake before completion, but it should be a conscious decision rather than something you find out afterwards.
What this ranking is not
It is not a quality ranking. Counting projects says nothing about build standard, finish, service charges after handover, or whether a developer answers the phone when something leaks.
It is not a delivery ranking either. The register records a filed completion date, and we track when those dates move, but a fair delivery score needs years of handovers measured against what was originally filed. We are not going to dress up a project count as that.
And it covers what is on the register now. A developer that finished everything it registered will look small here, which is why Nakheel sits on one line.
What it is good for: seeing who has real scale, checking the escrow position before you pay anything, and knowing whether the company selling to you has done this before.