Real Estate Club Dubai: a data-grounded property platform and iOS app
Our own product. We built a Dubai property platform on Laravel: a 24-category service directory, published ranking methodology, calculators, a handover tracker synced from the Dubai Land Department registry, a tool-calling AI advisor grounded in our database, and a native iOS app on the same API.
The challenge
Dubai buyers piece together answers from marketing copy
International and off-plan buyers in Dubai get most of their information from developer brochures and agency listings. Handover dates, fees and the quality of service providers are hard to check independently, and the official data sits in government registries that most people never open.
An AI assistant is only useful if it can't make things up
We wanted an assistant that could answer buyer questions and point people to real providers. A general-purpose chatbot would invent company names, fees and dates. It had to answer from our own data, cite its sources, and stay cheap and hard to abuse on a public page.
One backend for web and mobile
The same content, directory and tools needed to work on the website and in a native iOS app, without keeping two separate systems in sync.
Our approach
A Laravel monolith with structured data at its core
The platform runs on Laravel 12 with Blade, Livewire 4 and Alpine.js. Directory listings, categories, developers, projects, areas, rankings, reports and articles are all modelled as first-class records, so each one gets its own page and can be queried by the other features. Queues run on Horizon and Redis. Scheduled jobs handle data syncs, digests and health checks.
Registry data and ranking tables you can check
A small HTTP client reads the Dubai Land Department open-data gateway. A sync job runs twice a week and stores project snapshots. The handover tracker compares official construction progress and expected dates with each developer's timeline, and it emails people who are watching a building when the registry reading changes. Rankings use a published formula: 6 to 8 weighted public criteria, with every score sourced. Paid status is left out of the calculation.
An AI advisor that answers through tools, not from memory
Ask RECD is built on Prism PHP, so the model provider can be swapped. The default is OpenAI gpt-4o-mini. The model can't answer freely. It calls eight tools that query our own database: content search, directory and ranking lookups, project assets, handover status, glossary, market data, calculators and inquiry submission. Each tool returns source URLs so the answer can cite them. Replies stream token by token. Every turn is logged with its token usage and cost. A guard layer runs honeypot, bot and signed-token checks before any model call. On top of that there are per-IP rate limits, a global daily cap and a daily spend limit.
A native app on the same API
We added a versioned JSON API with Sanctum to the Laravel app, and it doesn't require an account. The iOS app is built with Expo, React Native, expo-router and TanStack Query, and it lives in the same repository. It reuses the advisor, directory, handover radar, calculators and lead capture from the backend. Accounts are only needed for saved items and push notifications.
How we delivered
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1
Data model
DevelopmentModelled listings, developers, projects, areas, rankings and articles as linked records, each with its own page.
Laravel 12 Directory Rankings -
2
Registry sync
DevelopmentBuilt a Dubai Land Department open-data client and a twice-weekly sync that feeds the handover tracker and the watch alerts.
DLD open data Scheduler Horizon -
3
Grounded advisor
AIShipped a streaming, tool-calling assistant that answers only from our own database and cites its sources.
Prism PHP Tool calling Cost guardrails -
4
iOS app
MobileBuilt a native Expo app on a versioned API with no login wall, reusing the advisor, directory and calculators.
Expo Sanctum API App Store
Results
Growth over time
Since Jul 2025A live platform with its own data
Real Estate Club Dubai is live with a service directory across 24 categories, profiles for 24 developers, 31 area guides, editorial rankings in 13 categories with a public methodology, and more than 15 calculators covering fees, mortgages, yields, visas and fit-out costs. The handover tracker refreshes from the Dubai Land Department registry twice a week.
An assistant that points to real records
Ask RECD answers Dubai property questions using the same records that power the site. It links to real articles, listings and project pages, and it can turn a conversation into a lead without creating duplicates.
A native iOS app in the App Store
The Real Estate Club Dubai iOS app is live in the App Store. It runs on the same backend and API, so new content, listings and data show up on the web and in the app together.
