(Dubai) — DAMAC Properties entered Asia Pacific with a strategy that initially looked more like building a capital-distribution network than pursuing a large-scale physical expansion. In December 2023, the company opened an office in Shanghai, followed by offices in Beijing and Singapore in May 2024 to broaden access to investors across Asia Pacific. In August 2025, DAMAC opened another regional office in Hong Kong, covering Hong Kong, Macau, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. The sequence of openings underscores Asia’s growing role as a source of demand for DAMAC’s luxury property portfolio in Dubai and other global markets.
The move came as DAMAC had already reached a scale that allowed it to expand across regions without relying on any single project. According to Invest Hong Kong in 2025, the company had more than 75 towers, six large-scale communities, as well as hotels and serviced apartments across 12 major cities. Company data in 2026 showed that more than 50,000 homes had been handed over, while more than 54,000 units remained under construction or development. Against that backdrop, the Asian offices serve a broader function than conventional sales outlets, connecting Asian buyers with DAMAC’s portfolio across multiple markets.
Shanghai was the initial gateway for the latest expansion, while Beijing and Singapore extended DAMAC’s reach into two very different capital centers. The Singapore office is focused on investors and broker networks across Asia Pacific, while the Beijing operation strengthens access to high-net-worth buyers in China. A year later, Hong Kong was selected as a regional base covering four key markets in the Greater Bay Area: Hong Kong, Macau, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. The pattern suggests that DAMAC is building multiple distribution points across Asia rather than immediately establishing large residential development portfolios in every market.
DAMAC’s Asian expansion, however, is not limited to selling Dubai apartments to Asian investors, as the company also has a physical development in the region. One of the clearest examples is Mandarin Oriental Bolidhuffaru Reef in the Maldives, developed by DAMAC Properties on a 34-hectare site. The project comprises three private islands with 120 villas, including 56 overwater villas, 64 beachfront villas and 10 branded residences, with units ranging from about 200 to 1,000 square meters. Mandarin Oriental said the resort will feature 12 treatment suites, six food and beverage outlets and a roughly 20-minute speedboat transfer from Velana International Airport.
The Maldives project is significant because it demonstrates how DAMAC is taking its branded luxury real estate model beyond Dubai through partnerships with global hotel operators. Mandarin Oriental has been appointed to manage the resort, while DAMAC Properties is developing the 34-hectare project. The structure allows DAMAC to combine land value, branded residences and hospitality within a single premium asset while extending the DAMAC model into a new market. For Asia, Bolidhuffaru is one of the clearest examples of DAMAC’s physical development strategy in the region, even as its sales and marketing network extends well beyond its local development portfolio.
The push into Asia comes as DAMAC itself is undergoing a period of rapid growth in its home market. The company recorded AED36 billion, or about US$9.8 billion, in property sales in 2025, while the launch of DAMAC Islands 2 generated AED11 billion in sales within five hours in November of that year. In 2026, DAMAC said it expects to hand over 8,800 residential units and had awarded more than AED10 billion in construction contracts during the first six months of the year. The scale of sales and construction provides an indication of the operating capacity underpinning the company’s international expansion.
Behind DAMAC Properties, the group’s Asian expansion is also being driven by DAMAC Digital, its digital infrastructure business formerly known as EDGNEX. In July 2025, JLL confirmed that DAMAC Digital had secured a 50,000-square-meter site in Cikarang, Bekasi, for a US$2.3 billion data center project with projected capacity of more than 144MW. The first phase is targeted for completion in the third quarter of 2026, adding to DAMAC Digital’s footprint in Thailand and Malaysia. In June 2026, the company said it was building a capacity land bank of up to 6GW across 13 countries and more than 35 locations, including further expansion in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
The digital infrastructure expansion makes DAMAC’s footprint in Asia significantly broader than its luxury property portfolio and highlights the group’s evolution from a real estate developer into a wider infrastructure investor. DAMAC Digital said it had begun construction at 10 new sites within five months and was targeting more than 700MW of operational capacity across 14 locations by the first quarter of 2027, followed by 2GW by the first quarter of 2028. In Southeast Asia, the company had previously estimated investment of about US$3 billion over three to five years for data centers in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Asia is therefore becoming not only a market for DAMAC’s property sales, but also a destination for billions of dollars in physical capital deployment.
