Most expensive areas in Dubai: top 5 addresses and what they sell

The five most expensive addresses in Dubai are Emirates Hills, Jumeira Bay, Palm Jumeirah, Pearl Jumeira and Billionaire Row on the Dubai Water Canal. Each is expensive for its own reason: land for a mansion, a place on a closed island, a villa with its own beach, a plot on an island still being built, a building for thirteen owners.

One thing is common to all five: the market is one-off. Sales are few, there is no standard product, and a district average says almost nothing about a particular house.

Below is each address: what is sold there, where the price comes from and what can go wrong. This is not a ranking from dearest to cheapest. Prices are mostly left out — current listings sit on each district page.

The five at a glance

Emirates Hills: what is actually sold there?

Land. Emirates Hills is a gated Emaar community within Emirates Living, laid out around the Montgomerie golf course. Plots are sold here, and the owner designs and builds the house — so there are no two identical villas in the district and no typical price per square foot.

A plot is a two- to three-year construction project with a contractor and approvals. A finished mansion is somebody else's taste entire: layout, finishes, facade. Either way, what is paid for is privacy: the perimeter is guarded, there are no towers, no tourists and no promenade. There are no shops or cafes inside either.

What to weigh. This is the narrowest market we deal in: finding a buyer can take a year or two. Letting is equally bespoke, with voids between tenants measured in months. And a fifteen-year-old mansion often needs its air conditioning, pool plant and electrics replaced outright.

Jumeira Bay: why does a small island cost so much?

Because supply here really is closed. Jumeira Bay is a small man-made island off the Jumeirah shore, laid out in the shape of a seahorse. A causeway joins it to the mainland, and the city centre is minutes away rather than the half-hour the Palm requires.

The core of the island is the Bulgari resort and residences, with their own beach, marina and yacht club; around them sit villa plots and a small number of houses. There are only a few dozen properties and no new plots will appear. Price per square foot is among the highest in Dubai, and it barely sags in a downturn.

What to weigh. Closed supply cuts both ways: the buyer on your exit can take a year or more to appear. Island properties with a private beach and marina carry a high service charge, a permanent line for as long as you hold.

Palm Jumeirah: what do you pay for on the Palm?

A beach of your own. Palm Jumeirah is a reclaimed island built by Nakheel and occupied from 2006. The villas on its sixteen fronds each have a private stretch of sand and water at the end of the garden, which exists nowhere else in Dubai at this scale.

The island is three markets sharing one name. Apartment towers line the trunk, the fronds are almost entirely villas, and the crescent holds resorts and branded residences such as Atlantis, Six Senses and One&Only. The island cannot be extended, so the supply of homes on it is fixed.

What to weigh. There is one road on and off the island, and leaving at peak times takes a while. There are no schools on it. Service charges are among the highest in the emirate. A buyer for a top-end villa takes months to find, sometimes more than a year.

Pearl Jumeira: how does it differ from the island next door?

In stage and in entry price. Pearl Jumeira is the second Meraas island off Jumeirah, linked to the mainland by a road, with the city centre and the airport both close. It is built out considerably more loosely than neighbouring Jumeira Bay and is not yet full.

The anchor is the Nikki Beach resort and residences, with a beach and pool; the rest is plots for private villas. The entry level is lower than on Jumeira Bay, and that is the price of taking the district unfinished — a gap that runs to millions. There is more room to build to your own design than next door.

What to weigh. Living beside construction can run for several years. Infrastructure appears as development proceeds, and promises in a master plan cannot be inspected now. Building rules on the islands are stricter than on the mainland.

Billionaire Row on the canal: what kind of address is it?

A nickname, not a district. Billionaire Row is about three kilometres of Dubai Water Canal frontage between Tolerance Bridge and the Jumeirah footbridge. On paper there is no such address: the buildings sit in Al Wasl, Al Safa and Jumeirah 2.

Here you pay for having few neighbours. Buildings run from six to thirteen storeys: thirteen residences in The Rings, twenty-seven apartments in Mr. C. Almost every project carries a name — Four Seasons, Cavalli, Foster + Partners. The street is not uniform: one penthouse in One Canal changed hands for AED 183 million, while an apartment in Canal Front Residences costs an order of magnitude less.

What to weigh. The market is thin: in some months a project records no transactions at all, and an exit takes months and sometimes years. On One Canal and The Rings the stated handover date has already passed. In a 27-home building the shared costs are divided between 27 owners. Yields sit below Business Bay or Marina.

How do you choose between the five?

• A house to your own design, and privacy without the sea — Emirates Hills.
• A finished island minutes from the centre — Jumeira Bay.
• A villa with its own beach — Palm Jumeirah.
• A plot by the water inside the city, and the patience to wait — Pearl Jumeira.
• A residence rather than a villa, few neighbours, the centre close by — Billionaire Row.

None of the five is bought for a rental percentage, and none is exited quickly. The holding period here is long by definition.

What should you check before buying at this level?

• How many comparable properties actually sold in the past twelve months — not how many are listed.
• The annual service charge in dirhams and what it covers: security, beach, marina, common ground.
• On a plot, what may be built: height, footprint, setbacks — on the islands, setbacks from the water too.
• On a Palm villa, the plot boundary and the shoreline from the title plan rather than an assurance.
• The outlook and what is being built nearby: on the floor plan and on the ground, not on a render.
• On the canal, the developer's delivered buildings, the current programme and what the contract says about delay.

At this level the mistake is rarely the price; it is the timescale. The property turns out to be good, and the buyer on exit takes years to appear. Decide how long you are buying for, then choose the address. For buyers with substantial capital we keep a separate page — UHNWI.