Abu Dhabi Global Market

This review is specifically for ADFW 2025. This is now my 6th ADFW, previous years it’s been held in ADGM Bull-ring around the offices themselves. This year the waterfront space has added a new dynamic. The queues are less, no issues with waiting for lifts - well done a great event and a good improvement.

I had an excellent experience with Abu Dhabi Global Market. The team is highly responsive and professional, especially Ms. Hala, who provides extraordinary service and exceptional customer support. I would especially like to thank Ms. Nouf, Mr. Darwich, and Mr. Abdulla from the Transactions Department for their outstanding assistance and professionalism. They have been extremely supportive and efficient throughout the process. Overall, a very well-organized and supportive institution.

Update: Hisham and his colleagues got in touch with me to address this issue - I am grateful for their efforts. However, the best result we reached was to match a previous valuation from May. I was told the valuations are only generated to have a figure to work from when calculating the 2% transfer fee - instead of it being a fair evaluation on the market. ADGM is facilitating property transfers in Reem and they hold all this information (information which used to be public) and therefore these valuations can't be verified. While ADGM has said sales data will again be public at some point, in the meantime ADGM are still unable to provide a fair market valuation on my property, but if I also pay for a third-party valuation then ADGM may match or update it to another valuation. This says to me that ADGM doesn't have a process for conducting fair market valuations on property within it's jurisdiction, but ADGM should be able to give the most accurate valuation given they hold all the sales data. Unfortunately, agents and owners I've spoken to seem to share this confusion of why this seems to be the case when paying ADGM for valuations. Original: Yesterday I paid 1092AED for a unit valuation for my 2bd apartment in Sun Tower and it came back valued at 1M!? For context, the valuation that ADGM gave for the same apartment at the time of transfer FIVE months ago was 1.855M, even though I paid 1.575M for it AND the market prices has increased over 50% in the last year. They would have record of all of this because they generated the first valuation, facilitated the transfer of ownership, and they are keeping all of the property transactions in Reem private instead of how they used to be public with ADREC. I called ADGM and they claimed that their valuation is based on the average in the area, but you can't any 2bd anywhere in Reem with an asking price below 1.2m - therefore the average should be ATLEAST higher than 1.2m, and there's no way anyone has purchased a 2bd apartment for less than what a 1bd apartment costs in Sun Tower at the moment. Their reasoning simply doesn't line up with the actual market. Their response was that I should submit a valuation by a third party (more cost to me) or pay ADGM for another valuation - but why should I do that and pay one dirham more when they haven't even conducted the first valuation properly? Poor service and illogical reasoning from their customer support.

The ADGM team is very professional and extremely supportive. I would like to give special thanks to Mr. Yaseen Semsemyeh, who took full initiative and handled all pending tasks smoothly. Without his involvement, this would not have been possible. Also, thank you to Mr. Abdullah Aljunaibi for handling a complex transfer quickly and professionally. I was even late to my appointment, yet we managed to complete the transfer of two units in around 15 minutes from start to finish. Excellent service overall. ADGM continues to prove why it is the preferred financial centre. Highly recommended.

ADGM still need work to come up to the level of attracting investors: 1- They must solve the errors in their system and not make it the investor's responsibility and send him in hopeless non-ending loops. 2- They need to pay more attention to their services like: - Their title deeds are missing the vital details like appartment size, allocated parking, dimensions, etc. - Their valuations certificates are costy and outdated, they still use the 15years old valuations. 3- They need to be more investor friendly like other neighbours. I have a very bad experience with ADGM in 2025-2026