Honey Deylami Named No. 1 in Entrepreneur Middle East's Top 100 Agents List

Entrepreneur Middle East's August 2026 Special Edition introduces a new ranking, Survival of the Fittest: 100 Agents Driving UAE's Property Market Resilience, built around a simple premise: Dubai's real estate sector has never moved in a straight line, and the agents worth watching are rarely the ones who caught a single lucky cycle. As the market navigates renewed uncertainty stemming from regional tensions, the list sets out to spotlight the brokers, founders and dealmakers keeping deals moving, clients reassured and relationships intact when the easy wins have dried up. The selection weighed track record, the scale and complexity of deals closed, industry standing and adaptability over time, rather than headline transaction numbers alone.

Topping that list is Honey Deylami, Executive Partner at Dubai Sotheby's International Realty, named No. 1 in the ranking's debut edition.

Two decades at the centre of Dubai's luxury market

Deylami's career maps closely onto Dubai's own transformation into a global destination for trophy real estate. She entered the market in 2005, when the emirate's property sector was still finding its footing, and has since navigated the mid-2000s expansion, the global financial crisis and the post-pandemic luxury boom without losing momentum. She joined Dubai Sotheby's International Realty shortly after the firm established its UAE presence and has risen to the role of Executive Partner as one of its most accomplished advisors.

Her specialism today sits at the very top of the market: mansions, waterfront estates, branded residences and trophy penthouses across Palm Jumeirah, Jumeirah Bay Island, Dubai Hills Estate, DIFC and Emirates Hills, typically valued above AED30 million. Over 21 years, she has advised on more than AED26 billion in transactions, with a current portfolio exceeding AED5 billion in Dubai listings and an international property book worth more than GBP1 billion.

The milestones read like a market history in themselves. In 2021, she sold Dubai Hills Estate's highest-value villa for over AED100 million and completed the highest-value penthouse sale at Bulgari Residences twice over. A year later came Palm Jumeirah's highest-value villa sale, at more than AED145 million. In 2023, she brokered a AED220 million penthouse at AVA by Omniyat, one of the most valuable penthouse deals ever recorded on the island, earning her Dubai Sotheby's Top Performing Broker and Top Broker for Omniyat titles in the same year. She has kept that pace through 2024 and 2025, listing Villa Allegra on Palm Jumeirah at AED230 million and Dubai Hills Estate's current highest-value villa at AED150 million.

Trust over transactions

What makes Deylami stand out is not the scale of her deal-making but the thinking behind it. Rather than treating luxury real estate as a series of standalone sales, she positions herself as an advisor on capital preservation, portfolio diversification and generational wealth planning, a framing that has helped clients hold and grow assets across cycles rather than simply trade in and out of them.

That approach has translated into consistent recognition rather than one-off headlines. She has been named Dubai's Top Broker by the Dubai Land Department, awarded Real Estate Legend status by Arabian Business, and featured repeatedly among the Middle East's most influential women in business, most recently at the Global Women Leadership Awards 2026. Her voice regularly appears in Bloomberg, The National, Gulf News and Harper's Bazaar, where her own home at ONE at Palm was profiled.

In distinguished company

The list also recognises some of Deylami’s peers at Dubai Sotheby’s International Realty. Conor McKay, a Director with the firm, ranks prominently on the list as well owing to his thorough understanding of the super-prime real estate market and his adaptability. Known as the ‘Billionaire’s Broker’, he holds a consistent track record for super-prime sales. With many international buyers reassessing their current exposure in the Gulf market and taking a longer view, Conor has tailored his advisory accordingly to sustain client relationships.

Joelle Raad, Senior Director, and Leigh Borg, Executive Partner, also rank on the list owing to their expertise. Raad, having grown up in Dubai, knows the local landscape like few others do, while Borg has made a name for himself as a leading expert in Emirates Hills.

Why the No. 1 position matters now

Entrepreneur Middle East's ranking arrives at a pointed moment. As other agents on the list have noted, Dubai's ultra-prime market has shifted from an emotionally driven seller's market toward one governed by fundamentals, with buyers more disciplined and decision cycles longer than during the exuberance of 2022 to 2025. In that context, an advisor whose reputation rests on discretion, market intelligence and long-term relationships, rather than transaction volume alone, becomes more valuable, not less.

Deylami's placement at the top of this list is, in that sense, less a reward for past performance than a signal of where the market's confidence is heading next: toward the advisors who have already proven they can guide capital through uncertainty, not just through the good years.