Burj Azizi

Burj Azizi — The 131-Floor Vertical City Rewriting Dubai's Sheikh Zayed Road Skyline

TL;DR Snapshot

| Factor | Detail | |--------|--------| | Developer | Azizi Developments | | Location | Sheikh Zayed Road (SZR), Dubai | | Height | 700+ metres / 131 floors | | Ranking | Projected world's second-tallest building at completion | | Unit Types | 1BR (788–1,514 sqft) and 2BR (1,281–1,452 sqft) Apartments | | Price Range | AED 8M – AED 12M | | Payment Plan | 10% Down / 70% During Construction / 20% On Handover | | Completion | Q3 2030 | | Mixed-Use Program | 7-star hotel (mid-tower) + 7-floor vertical mall (podium) | | Investment Thesis | Globally iconic trophy address; scarcity on SZR freehold market |

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The Scale Proposition: Why 131 Floors and 700 Metres Are Different

Dubai has built tall for two decades. The Burj Khalifa at 828 metres remains the world's tallest structure. The Marina towers, the JLT clusters, the Business Bay skyline — these create a city that has normalised height as an architectural ambition. And yet Burj Azizi represents a genuinely new scale statement even within this context.

At 700+ metres and 131 floors, Burj Azizi is designed to become the world's second-tallest building at its completion. Second only to the Burj Khalifa — the structure that defines Dubai in global visual culture. In a city that invented architectural superlatives as a development strategy, Burj Azizi is the singular structure that positions itself directly behind the world's tallest in the global hierarchy.

What does that mean in property investment terms? It means scarcity of a kind that cannot be manufactured: there will only ever be one world's second-tallest building. The Chrysler Building in New York held the tallest title for less than a year; it has been commercially and culturally significant for nearly 90 years since. Empire State Building apartments — never prime by New York standards in terms of neighbourhood — command premiums purely because of the address's global iconography. The same dynamic applies to Burj Azizi: the building itself becomes the asset, independent of the floor plan's square footage.

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The Three-Component Vertical City

Burj Azizi is not a residential tower with a lobby. It is a purpose-designed vertical city structured in three distinct programmatic zones stacked within a single supertall structure:

The Vertical Mall (Podium — Floors 1–7 approximately) The building's base delivers seven floors of vertical retail — an unprecedented mall format that stacks shopping levels rather than spreading them horizontally. The vertical mall will house global luxury retail brands, fine dining, lifestyle services, and entertainment venues. For residents living in the upper floors, this creates a within-building retail and dining program comparable to having The Dubai Mall on their ground floor — without the need to leave the building.

The vertical mall is not merely a convenience for residents. As a destination in its own right on Sheikh Zayed Road — with direct access from one of Dubai's most trafficked arterials — it will draw visitors from across the city, creating a commercial energy around the building's base that reinforces the address's vibrancy and visibility.

The 7-Star Hotel (Mid-Tower) The middle section of Burj Azizi houses a 7-star hotel — a designation indicating an experience beyond the conventional five-star classification, encompassing ultra-personalised service, extreme privacy protocols, and amenities calibrated for Ultra-High-Net-Worth clientele. The hotel will include its own lobby infrastructure, F&B program, spa, and recreational facilities.

For residential owners in the tower, the hotel's presence is both a premium amenity and a validation of the building's positioning. The hotel's operational excellence — maintained because the hotel brand's reputation depends on it — sets the standard for the entire building's management and maintenance. Buildings with luxury hotel components are consistently better maintained over their lifetimes than pure residential developments, because the hotel operator's business model depends on the physical plant being impeccably kept.

Hotel guests visiting on short stays will also create a sustained demand for short-term residential rental within the building — a potential revenue stream for investor-owners who make their units available on hotel-managed rental programs.

The Residential Floors (Upper Tower) The residential apartments occupy the upper floors, positioned above both the hotel and the vertical mall. This stacking creates the highest residential floors in Dubai — above the Burj Khalifa observation deck level at floor 124 (555 metres), putting the uppermost Burj Azizi residences in a truly rarefied atmospheric position.

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Unit Specifications: 1BR and 2BR at Global Scale

The residential offering at Burj Azizi is configured as 1-bedroom and 2-bedroom apartments positioned as entry-tier access to the world's second-tallest building.

1-Bedroom Apartments (788–1,514 sqft) The 1BR range at Burj Azizi covers an unusually wide size spectrum — from an efficient 788 sqft to a generous 1,514 sqft (larger than many 2BR apartments in conventional Dubai developments). This reflects the building's architecture: floor plates at extreme altitude are typically smaller in perimeter, so individual units are proportioned to maximise views rather than maximise area per unit.

The upper end of the 1BR range — 1,100–1,514 sqft — represents genuinely large single-bedroom apartments. For buyers seeking a prestige address without the cost of a 2BR, these larger 1BR units offer superior living quality to most 2BR products in lower-rise Dubai developments.

2-Bedroom Apartments (1,281–1,452 sqft) The 2BR range is compact relative to conventional Dubai 2BR stock (where 1,000–1,500 sqft is typical), reflecting the premium floor plate at altitude. At AED 8M–12M for 2BR configurations, the price per square foot places Burj Azizi firmly in the ultra-luxury segment — but the view, the address, and the building's position in global architectural history justify the premium to buyers for whom the iconic address is the primary motivation.

Technical Specifications

• Luxury and high-end finishing throughout all units
• Central A/C with premium climate control systems
• Floor-to-ceiling glazing maximising panoramic views
• CCTV security infrastructure and 24/7 security staffing
• Covered parking allocation
• Landmark views — from the upper floors, views encompass the Gulf, the entire Sheikh Zayed Road corridor, Downtown Dubai, Jebel Ali, and on clear days the mountains of Oman

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Sheikh Zayed Road: The Address That Needs No Explanation

Sheikh Zayed Road is Dubai's spine — the 12-lane highway that connects Abu Dhabi to the northern emirate borders, passing through every major district of Dubai. From the DIFC financial towers to Dubai Marina's residential cluster, SZR is where Dubai's most significant commercial and residential assets concentrate.

Freehold residential property directly on SZR — on the highway itself, not in a development set back from it — is structurally scarce. The highway was built out decades before freehold residential was legislated, meaning most SZR-frontage land is either already developed as commercial, or held in long-established land bank positions. Burj Azizi's plot on SZR is, effectively, irreplaceable in the sense that no equivalent plot in an equivalent position can be created.

Connectivity from Burj Azizi

| Destination | Drive Time | |-------------|-----------| | DIFC | 5 minutes | | Downtown Dubai / Burj Khalifa | 5 minutes | | The Dubai Mall | 5 minutes | | Dubai Opera | 7 minutes | | Dubai International Airport | 15 minutes | | Dubai Marina | 20 minutes | | Expo City Dubai | 25 minutes | | Abu Dhabi | 85–90 minutes |

Dubai Metro (Red Line): Multiple SZR stations provide direct Metro access — the Financial Centre, Emirates Towers, and World Trade Centre stations are all within close proximity. From these stations, the Red Line connects directly to both the airport and to Marina/JBR at the other end of the city.

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Investment Framework

The Trophy Asset Model Burj Azizi is not analysed through the same yield-first framework as a JVC studio or a Majan 2BR. It is a trophy asset — a category of property where the primary investment logic is global scarcity, prestige positioning, and capital preservation rather than rental yield optimisation.

In trophy asset investing:

• Liquidity comes from global buyer reach: A unit in the world's second-tallest building has a global buyer pool that a conventional Dubai apartment does not. UHNWI buyers from Europe, Asia, the Americas, and the Gulf all participate in trophy asset markets regardless of local market conditions.
• Yield is secondary but not absent: 1BR units in ultra-luxury SZR towers rent at AED 300,000–500,000+ annually to corporate tenants, diplomats, and global executives. On AED 8M acquisition, this implies 3.75%–6.25% gross yield — respectable for the trophy segment.
• Capital appreciation follows iconicity: The Burj Khalifa's residential prices have appreciated by multiples since completion despite no change in physical fundamentals. The address becomes more valuable over time as the building's global cultural recognition compounds.

Payment Plan: 10/70/20

• 10% on booking (AED 800,000–1,200,000 at entry)
• 70% during construction (2024–2030): approximately 6 years of installment spreading
• 20% on handover: serviceable through mortgage

The six-year construction timeline creates extended capital deployment spreading — the 70% during construction is distributed over approximately 24 installments, reducing the annual cash requirement substantially compared to the nominal total.

The 2030 Completion Context Dubai 2030 sits at the convergence of multiple long-duration catalysts: Expo City's continued development post-Expo 2020, the Al Maktoum Airport expansion projected to make it the world's largest, the D33 economic agenda targeting AED 32 trillion in additional economic value, and Vision 2031 targets for tourist arrivals and international business attraction. A trophy residential asset delivered in 2030 enters a market shaped by these structural growth drivers.

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Azizi Developments: Developer Profile

Azizi Developments is one of the UAE's largest private real estate developers, with a delivered portfolio exceeding 30,000 units and an active construction pipeline across Dubai's key zones including Dubai Healthcare City, Al Furjan, Palm Jumeirah, Dubai Creek, and City Walk. Azizi is a family-owned Emirati developer whose portfolio spans from the accessible (studio apartments at AED 500K–800K in JVC) to the ultra-luxury (Riviera on the Dubai Canal, Mina on Palm Jumeirah).

Burj Azizi represents Azizi's most ambitious project — a statement of intent that positions the company alongside the world's most significant architectural development achievements. The scale of Burj Azizi's ambition has generated significant international media coverage, which itself functions as marketing for the development.

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Who Buys at Burj Azizi?

End-User Profile

• Global executives and senior corporate professionals seeking a Dubai address that resonates internationally
• Ultra-High-Net-Worth individuals for whom the "second tallest building" designation is itself the purchase motivator
• Collectors of globally iconic real estate who hold addresses across New York, London, Hong Kong, and Dubai as asset class diversification

Investor Profile

• Trophy asset investors targeting scarcity-based capital appreciation
• Short-term rental investors targeting the hotel-adjacent business traveller and UHNWI visitor market on the upper floors
• Portfolio investors who want a marquee Dubai asset as the prestige anchor of a larger property portfolio

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Final Assessment

Burj Azizi is the kind of building that gets built once per generation in a major global city. At 700+ metres and 131 floors on Sheikh Zayed Road, with a 7-star hotel and seven-floor vertical mall embedded within the same structure, it compresses an entire city district's worth of programming into a single address. The 1BR and 2BR entry tier at AED 8M–12M provides access to this globally significant asset at pricing that will, if the historical trajectory of comparable supertall buildings holds, look attractive relative to the completed building's standing in Dubai's luxury market hierarchy. The 2030 delivery places the investment inside the period of Dubai's most concentrated infrastructure and economic growth catalysts. For buyers who understand that some addresses are worth owning for reasons beyond square footage and yield mathematics, Burj Azizi is among the most compelling propositions in the current Dubai market.