Eagle Hills

Who they are

Eagle Hills was founded in Abu Dhabi in 2014 by Mohamed Alabbar, who set up Emaar in 1997 and went on to build Downtown Dubai, the Dubai Mall and the Burj Khalifa. Eagle Hills is his private company and has no shareholding or contractual link to Emaar. What they share is the founder and the approach.

The approach is easy to recognise: not a single tower but a whole district with a waterfront, retail and a hotel at its heart. For its first decade the company worked mostly outside the UAE — Belgrade Waterfront in Serbia, Marassi Al Bahrain, and projects in Oman, Morocco, Jordan and Ethiopia.

What they build in the UAE

Ramhan Island in Abu Dhabi is the flagship: a natural island of roughly 400 hectares between Saadiyat and Yas, planned for about 1,800 standalone villas, a marina and yacht club, a retail promenade and a Ritz-Carlton Reserve with floating villas. In format it is Abu Dhabi's answer to Palm Jumeirah, built from scratch.

Maryam Island is a waterfront on Al Khan lagoon near old Sharjah: apartments, hotels, a promenade, waterside dining and a souq. Aysha Residences, six-storey buildings of studios to three-bedroom flats, is part of it. Kalba Waterfront sits on Sharjah's Indian Ocean coast, and Fujairah Beach brings Address Residences — apartments, beach and garden villas, and serviced units run by the Address hotel brand.

Why nothing in Dubai

It is a strategy, not an accident. Master-plan land in Dubai is expensive and largely held by government-linked developers. Eagle Hills goes where there is no dominant player yet and where the emirate itself wants someone to build it a showcase.

For a buyer that means an Eagle Hills home is not a cheaper Dubai apartment but a different market. Sharjah has its own ownership rules for foreigners, Abu Dhabi its investment zones, Fujairah a seasonal resort demand. Comparing price per square foot on Ramhan with the Palm is useful; deciding on that gap alone is not.

Living there

The strength of every project is the life around the water: a promenade and a hotel in the middle of the district set the price in places like these, and Eagle Hills does them well — on an evening Maryam Island draws half of Sharjah, not just its residents.

The weakness is time. A master plan of this size fills up over years, and early buyers live next to a building site; the school and the corner shop arrive after the keys. On Ramhan, built from nothing, that will be most noticeable. Buy to live and plan for a few quiet years; buy for growth and that early entry is exactly what you are paid for.

How I handle their projects

First I separate the emirate: each has its own regulator, registration and escrow rules and its own list of freehold zones for foreigners, and I check those rather than carrying Dubai habits over.

Then the stage of the master plan. Launch prices are lowest, but so is certainty about what will actually stand around the building at handover. I look at which infrastructure is already under way and compare with other island projects — Saadiyat, Yas, the Palm — at the same stage, not in their finished state.