Al Barari

Al Barari is the greenest place in Dubai, and it was built to be. A single family's development company planted it on the desert's edge beyond Nad Al Sheba as a low-density community of very large villas among botanical gardens, waterways and woodland, and kept it small: a handful of villa neighbourhoods, a few apartment buildings at the edge, a farm restaurant, a spa and a gym, and more greenery per home than anywhere else in the city. It is expensive, quiet and unlike anywhere around it. The name means "the wilds", open uncultivated country, which the developer chose for a community planted as a garden.

The place

The community lies on the inland side of Nad Al Sheba, off the Al Ain road, with Meydan and the racecourse a short drive on one side and the desert on the other. Inside it the villas sit on large plots along winding lanes, screened by planting, with streams and lakes threaded between them and a nursery of its own growing the plants that fill it. The farm restaurant at the centre, the spa and the gym are the community's shared life; the apartment buildings and the newer villa neighbourhoods sit at the edges.

It was built by one family's company rather than a master developer, slowly and at its own pace, with its own nursery growing the planting and its own management keeping it; that is why it is small, why it has stayed green, and why its service charges are what they are. The developer's later neighbourhoods and apartment buildings followed the same rule at a smaller scale.

It is a place designed to be walked in the shade, and it is the only community in the desert where that is true.

What you get

Villas, mostly very large, in the community's original neighbourhoods, each on a plot with gardens front and back and the community's planting beyond; smaller villas in the newer neighbourhoods; and apartments in a small number of low and mid-rise buildings at the community's edge, larger and quieter than the city's norm. The finish is the developer's own and is high throughout. Many of the original villas have been extended and refitted by their owners, and the register records the difference.

Getting around

By car. The Al Ain road reaches Downtown and Business Bay in a short run outside the peak, which is the community's practical advantage over the desert suburbs further out, and the airport is reasonable; the Marina is a long way. There is no Metro and no bus of any use. Inside the community the lanes are quiet and shaded and residents walk them.

Day to day

The farm restaurant, the spa and the gym are the community's own, and its residents use them as a village uses its square. There is a small retail centre for the daily necessities; the larger shops are in Nad Al Sheba and Meydan, a short drive. A well-regarded school sits at the community's edge, with more in Meydan and Nad Al Sheba nearby, and nurseries operate in the community. The gardens and the waterways carry the weekends; the racecourse and the cycle park are minutes away.

Who it suits

Buyers who want a very large house in a garden, near the centre, without the crowds of the coast, and who will pay for the planting. Families who want quiet, space and a school within a short drive. Owners who intend to live in what they buy, which almost all here do.

Privacy is the community's other product. The lanes wind, the planting screens each house from the next, and the community's residents, many of them well known, have chosen it for exactly that. A buyer who wants to see and be seen should look at the coast.

It suits people less well who want a walkable high street, a beach, a modest house, or an apartment in a lively district: the community is quiet by design and its apartments are few.

Buying and renting here

The community's houses are individual to a degree the standard-layout suburbs are not, and the register reflects it: the tables on this page show what each layout has actually fetched, but a buyer here reads the plot, the planting and the house's condition more than the layout. The register files a villa sold with its plot against the plot, and this page reads those sales correctly. Off-plan has been confined to the newer neighbourhoods and is kept apart from resales here. Service charges are among the highest in the city, because the greenery is not free, and should be checked before an offer.

The letting market is thin, since almost every home is owner-occupied; for those that are let, the official index caps a renewal while a new lease follows the market.

Neighbourhoods to know

The original villa neighbourhoods around the farm and the waterways are the community's heart and its top end; the newer villa neighbourhoods and the apartment buildings at the edge are its entry point. The table below shows where the community's sales are actually happening, and every project has its own page with every recorded price.