Mohanad Alwadiya—he is the brightest face of Real Estate in the Middle East also known as the “Wolf of Real Estate” a successful author and a philanthropist , he is the founder of Harbor Real Estate Dubai and is considered by many as one of the property industry’s most dynamic practitioners. He is an award-winning real estate professional and entrepreneur who, as the CEO of Harbor Real Estate, has set new standards in providing real estate investment and management solutions to Harbor’s clients, and has led to Harbor Real Estate’s winning the highly-coveted title of “Best Agency for Property Management” in the Property Times People’s Choice Awards 2015.

Mohanad’s achievements have emanated from his success in developing the industry-leading capabilities of Harbor, resulting in exceptional results for the multibillion dirham portfolios held by clients such as National Bonds Corporation, Investment Corporation of Dubai, Al Thani Investments, Daman Investments, Tadhamon Islamic Bank, Amlak Finance and Global Investment & Development.

Mohanad is also considered to be one of the most candid, insightful, and eloquent commentators in the UAE property market, whose extensive experience makes him a reliable industry resource. He is renowned for his professionalism, incisive analyses, and astute observations.

Mohanad’s achievements have emanated from his success in developing the industry-leading capabilities of Harbor, resulting in exceptional results for the multibillion dirham portfolios held by clients such as National Bonds Corporation, Investment Corporation of Dubai, Al Thani Investments, Daman Investments, Tadhamon Islamic Bank, Amlak Finance and Global Investment & Development.

Mohanad is considered to be one of the most candid, insightful and eloquent commentators in the UAE property market, whose extensive experience makes him a reliable industry resource. He is renowned for his professionalism, incisive analyses and astute observations.

Mohanad Alwadiya recieving award for being the best social media real estate Influencer.

He started his career at Leo Burnett, a Chicago-based multinational marketing services group of companies with offices throughout the Middle East and became the most-awarded Communications Director during his seven years there. This period of his career really prepared him for success because of the vast amount of learning that he received from, not only the Leo Burnett organization, but also from the excellent clients from various industries that it was his pleasure to work with. Those were happy times!

However, having descended from a real estate family, he soon realized that his passion was real estate so I he launched his real estate journey and was soon Head of the Projects Marketing and Sales Division for the global real estate arm of Dubai Holdings. Once again, the knowledge that he absorbed and the experience gained from being part of this great organization really gave him the confidence to start my own business launched as Harbor Real Estate Dubai.

Over the last 20 years, he has also obtained a master’s degree in property management from the University of Salford, published two books about real estate and one of them became the best-selling book in the Middle East, and hosted the top-rated radio and reality-TV property shows in the Arab World.

At Harbor Real Estate, he currently manages real estate portfolios with a total value of around AED 14.8 billion. So, there are lots of clients with lots of money invested that are relying on them. He takes this responsibility very seriously indeed.

Obviously, they needed to adapt. This required a brutally honest assessment of our capabilities as individuals and the capability of Harbor Real Estate to continue to provide the services that his clients required during a pandemic and resulting economic turmoil on a global scale.

Thankfully, the country’s leaders showed great wisdom and resolve to enable businesses such as Harbor Real Estate to navigate their way through a very awkward period.

His company realized early on that needed to make sense of the chaos and we determined that we required new solutions to meet new challenges and he thinks this is the greatest lesson that learned at Harbor Real Estate during the Global Financial Crisis. Innovation and the ability to learn relevant to circumstances will always prevail regardless of what the circumstances are. This is the first time any of them had experienced a globally crippling pandemic and experience, innovation and adaptability allowed them to keep serving our clients.

He recalls the executive team discussing the Great Depression of 1929 whereby the first mistake that many companies made was to downsize their client servicing workforce. This action essentially compounded their problems because it affected service delivery and strangled revenue generation. This was one thing that we at Harbor Real Estate refused to do and during the course of the pandemic, we have actually grown our workforce by 38% and consequently managed to grow the portfolios we manage by more than 30%.

On the cost side, it was important to modify the business to reflect a more variable cost structure. Fortunately, we had always been conscious of overheads, particularly those that were fixed in nature and re-structuring the business to minimize those fixed costs was not too difficult to achieve. So, the focus was really on revenue generation complemented by realistic cost control measures designed to enhance productivity, not strangle operations.

Finally, it was about people. To develop and maintain a competitive edge any business must have a team dedicated to providing the best they possibly can for their clients. This includes not just generating the solutions but executing and delivering on promises as well. Harbor’s success can be attributed directly to the efforts of its people and I am so thankful to the Harbor Real Estate Team for their resilience and commitment during this difficult period.