Billionaire Row

What the place is, and why "Billionaire Row"

The Dubai Water Canal opened in November 2016: 3.2 kilometres of cut waterway joining Business Bay to the Gulf and slicing old Jumeirah in two. With the water came something the city barely had — a second line of waterfront inside districts that were already built, expensive and low-rise.

The land along the new channel turned out to be minutes from Sheikh Zayed Road and, at the same time, inside villa neighbourhoods where high-rise is not allowed. That is where the character of the street comes from: not one skyscraper, six to thirteen storeys, buildings holding dozens of homes rather than a thousand.

The Billionaire Row nickname stuck to the stretch between Tolerance Bridge and the Jumeirah footbridge, earned by the roster of developers and by the prices on record. On paper there is no such address: the buildings sit in Al Wasl, Al Safa and Jumeirah 2.

Formally this is not one community under one management either. Every building has its own developer, its own service charge and its own managing agent. Two things are shared: the water outside the window and the price of entry.

How the canal differs from the Dubai norm

For twenty years Dubai has sold the vertical: the higher the floor, the dearer the view, and buyers paid for altitude. On the canal the logic inverts — here you pay for having few neighbours. Thirteen residences in The Rings, twenty-seven apartments in Mr. C, eighty-eight in Cavalli Couture. A typical Business Bay tower holds more than five hundred.

The product is different as a result. Instead of studios and one-beds for letting: penthouses, sky villas and sky mansions with three to five bedrooms, residences of 9,500 to 19,500 sqft with a private lift, pool and cinema inside the home. This is housing to live in, not a unit to rent out.

Second difference — the brands. Almost nothing on the canal is "just a developer’s building": Four Seasons, Mr. C, Cavalli, and Foster + Partners on The Rings. The brand is not a badge on the façade here; it is the explanation for a price per square foot several times that of Al Wasl without water.

Third — deal density. Few buildings, few homes in them, and the market comes out thin: in some months a project records no transactions at all. That is not a dead market, it is a one-off one, and judging it by district averages is pointless.

Two banks — and two different purchases

The northern side is Jumeirah 2: old low-rise Jumeirah with villas, schools and Jumeirah Beach a couple of minutes away. Sea Mirror Residences, Eden House The Canal, Four Seasons Private Residences, Mr. C, The Rings and The Melgrano stand here. It is the dearest and the most urban part of the street — water in front, sea behind.

The southern side is Al Wasl and Al Safa, with Safa Park and the ramp onto Sheikh Zayed Road. Cavalli Couture, Casa Canal, One Canal, Eden House The Park and the nine Canal Front Residences blocks sit here. The run into Downtown and DIFC is shorter, and the price per foot lower than on the Jumeirah bank.

Tolerance Bridge and two footbridges cross the water, so "the other bank" is a few minutes on foot. For the deal, though, the bank matters: a Jumeirah 2 address and an Al Wasl address read differently both in the listing and in the bank valuation.

Eden House The Park stands apart as the largest project on the street: seven buildings and around 550 residences, five of them on the promenade and the rest set back towards Safa Park. It is the only one selling off a price list rather than in negotiation — three registry deals land between AED 3,565 and 3,701 per sqft, where the neighbours vary by multiples. The price of that predictability is privacy: 550 homes do not give what a thirteen-residence building gives.