The First Group

What it is, and how the model differs

The First Group is a hospitality company first, not a residential developer that took up hotels on the side. Its product has been structured differently from most developers in this list from the outset: the buyer acquires not an apartment for personal living but a hotel room, managed by an international operator, with a share in the revenue pool from letting all the building's rooms together.

This "investment room" model predates the company as a brand and comes from the hotel business rather than residential development. Legally and in substance, it is a different asset from an ordinary apartment: a right of use rather than unconditional personal ownership in the usual sense, and income depends not on your single unit but on how well the operator fills the whole building.

From Sports City to the tallest hotel in the world

The company's first projects were residential towers in Dubai Sports City, a district that was only starting to develop in the mid-2000s and aimed at a mass rather than a premium segment. Those were relatively modest buildings in both scale and ambition, where the company tested the managed-income model itself on a less risky, less capital-intensive product.

From that starting point the company reached a project of an entirely different calibre — a supertall hotel in Dubai Marina that joined a major international operator's portfolio as the world's tallest hotel at opening. That is not just growth in scale but a qualitative leap: moving from mid-market residential towers to a flagship project for that kind of international operator only happens when execution on earlier collaborations genuinely satisfied the partner.

What an international operator on the building means

A major hotel brand on the facade is not a licensed logo — it is operational management: service standards, staff, room occupancy and the operator's own reputation are tied to this specific address every day, not just at opening. That works in an investor's favour: upkeep and marketing are run by a company whose core business this is, not a residential developer learning hotel operations on the job.

The flip side is that the management agreement becomes the central document of the deal, more important than the unit itself. Its term, what happens when it ends or the operator changes, what share of revenue goes to the room owner and what is retained for upkeep and marketing — that is what actually determines yield, not the rate quoted in a brochure.

Yield and the limits of the model

A revenue pool means the owner receives a share of the building's total revenue, not a fixed rent for their specific room, and that share moves with the hotel's occupancy by season and by the broader market. In a strong season this can outperform ordinary long-term apartment rent, but in a slow season or a dip in tourist flow, income falls with the whole building, not just with your unit.

Personal use of the room under this model is usually capped at a set number of days a year, not free as in an ordinary apartment — that is part of the agreement worth reading upfront if you expect to occasionally live in the property you bought, rather than only collect income from it.

The resale market

Reselling an investment room is a narrower market than reselling an ordinary apartment: a resale buyer has to understand and accept the pool-income model itself, not just want a unit of a certain size in a certain district. That buyer pool is smaller than in the ordinary residential market, and time on market at sale tends to run longer.

Liquidity of a specific unit is also closely tied to the operator's reputation at the time of sale: a change of management company or a decline in the hotel's performance directly affects the asset's appeal to the next buyer, and that is worth checking separately from the general state of the property market.

Who it suits, and how I work with its properties

The model suits buyers looking for a managed asset with no personal involvement in operations, who understand that yield here is variable rather than a guaranteed rate — and does not suit buyers who want to live freely and continuously in the property they bought, or who expect a classic long-term lease with a fixed tenant.

For any property from this company, I start with the management agreement itself — not the marketed yield figures but the revenue-split terms, the agreement's length and how it renews — and separately look at the actual payouts on already-operating rooms in the same building over the past several periods, not a forward projection.