Wellness in real estate has crossed a turning point. It is no longer a premium add-on or a niche market trend. At the Property Technology Confex, a keynote panel led by Tekha Selim, Executive Vice President and Head of MENA at the International WELL Building Institute, made that case with force.
Drawing on perspectives from development, architecture, indoor environmental quality, and large-scale community delivery, the session tackled a question developers can no longer avoid: what does it actually take to build healthier places to live, and who is willing to pay for it?
The answer, across every voice on the panel, was consistent. Wellness is here. The market is pricing it in. And the developers who treat it as a value strategy rather than a cost line are the ones gaining ground.
Redefining Wellness Beyond the Gym and Spa
A central theme of the session was the need to retire the old definition of wellness. A spa room and a line in the brochure no longer qualify. The new benchmark is measurable outcomes: cleaner air, safer water, better sleep, reduced stress, and spaces that actively support movement and mental health.
Across the discussion, wellness value showed up in four practical areas:
- Indoor environmental quality: air quality monitoring, ventilation performance, filtration, humidity and CO2 controls
- Circadian lighting and daylight access for better sleep and wellbeing
- Biophilic design: greenery, natural materials, views, and sensory calm
- Acoustic comfort: noise reduction and healthier indoor sound environments
Integrating Wellness from the Design Stage: Insights from MERED
Can Buyukcelen, Executive Director of Design and Construction at MERED, described how his team now treats wellness as a baseline requirement rather than an upgrade layer. The approach starts at the earliest design stages, where decisions about ventilation, HVAC filtration, water quality, and smart building management systems are made before any cost pressure to strip them out.
His perspective reflected a broader shift in buyer expectations. Residents increasingly want homes that work harder, functioning not just as living spaces but as recovery environments, home offices, and health-supporting ecosystems. Meeting that expectation requires building it in from the start, not retrofitting it later at a much higher cost.
Form Follows Experience: The Nordic Office Architects Approach to Healthy Building Design
Firas Hnoosh, Managing Director at Nordic Office Architects, introduced a reframing that resonated across the panel: not “form follows function,” but form follows experience. That means designing for what people sense, what they see, hear, smell, and feel, rather than just what a space technically accommodates.
In practice, this means combining passive strategies such as daylighting, material selection, view access, and walkability with active technology layers including AI-enabled air and water monitoring, circadian lighting systems, automated irrigation for indoor green walls, and approaches to reducing external sound impact.
Hnoosh also pointed to a financial signal the market is already sending: younger buyers are increasingly willing to pay a premium for certified healthy buildings. Wellness is no longer just an ethical consideration. It has become a financial differentiator.
Post-COVID Buyer Priorities: How Dubai Holding Real Estate Is Responding
Kifah Sbeitan, Executive Director at Dubai Holding Real Estate, brought the perspective of scale. Post-COVID, the shift in buyer priorities was fast and lasting. Demand is now strongly driven by amenities, active living features, energy efficiency, and access to open community space, all of which are increasingly tied to perceived investment value.
Sbeitan connected wellness to urban happiness indicators globally, positioning community planning as the real backbone of healthy living. Parks, walkable connectivity, inclusivity, and accessibility matter as much as what happens inside any individual building. He also noted the growing role of certification frameworks in setting consistent delivery standards, pushing wellness from pilot projects into mainstream expectations.
Indoor Air Quality and the Case for Retrofitting Existing Buildings
Hisham Jaber, Founder of The Healthy Home and IEQ Technologies, delivered one of the most grounded points of the session. Most occupants assume their indoor air is fine because they cannot see a problem. The reality is that awareness remains low across existing housing stock, which is precisely where the biggest opportunity lies.
His focus was on education, transparency, and the growing expectation among tenants and buyers to see actual indoor performance data rather than simply trust a certification label. The core argument: asset value is increasingly linked to measurable indoor environmental quality, and the market is beginning to price that in as retrofits become more economically viable and more frequently demanded.
The Business Case: Wellness as a Value Strategy, Not a Cost Line
The panel did not avoid the tension between design ambition and budget reality. The consistent answer was timing. When wellness is planned early, it integrates cleanly and adds proportionally little to overall project cost. When it is added late or retrofitted, the cost multiplies significantly.
Digital tools including BIM, performance simulations, and lifecycle forecasting were presented as essential to making wellness investment predictable rather than speculative. They allow developers to model outcomes, present the financial case to stakeholders, and reduce the perceived risk of going further on health-led design.
The mindset shift the panel was pushing for is straightforward: wellness is not a cost line. It is a value strategy, with measurable returns in asset performance, tenant retention, certification premium, and market differentiation.
What This Means for the GCC Real Estate Market
The session made a clear case that wellness is no longer coming to the GCC real estate market. It is already here. What is changing now is the speed at which residential development is catching up to commercial, and how quickly developers are recognising that healthy building features are not just good ethics but genuine market leverage.
For anyone working in development, design, property management, or building technology across the region, the direction is clear: healthy buildings, healthy communities, and measurable performance as a competitive edge.
Watch the full keynote panel from the Property Technology Confex to hear how industry leaders are translating wellness into design, delivery, and real market value.
