Dubai Hills Estate

Dubai Hills Estate is the community the city's families now measure the others against. Emaar and Meraas built it together on the land between Al Khail Road and Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Road, around a golf course, a very large park and a mall, with schools and a hospital inside the gate, and it did something none of the older suburbs managed: it put a settled villa community, a run of apartment quarters and everything a family needs in the middle of the city rather than at its edge. It is expensive, it is busy on the register, and it is not finished.

The place

The community lies along Al Khail Road with Al Barsha and the Mall of the Emirates on one side and Downtown and Business Bay a short run on the other. The golf course runs through its centre, with the largest villas on its fairways; the park, a long green with lawns, a lake, a skate park, playgrounds, courts and a running loop, sits beside the mall at the community's heart; and the villa and townhouse neighbourhoods spread out from there in named quarters on quiet loops. The apartment quarters line the community's main boulevard and its edges, low and mid-rise in the earlier phases, taller in the later ones.

It is a large place, still building at its far edges, and it has grown into itself faster than any community of its size before it.

What you get

Every kind of home, all by one developer's standards. Townhouses in the earliest neighbourhoods, which remain the community's entry point. Villas from family houses on internal streets to the golf-facing and park-facing homes that are among the dearest on this side of the city, and a quarter of large plots on which owners have built to their own designs. Apartments in the boulevard's buildings and the newer towers, from studios to family layouts, with the park-facing and golf-facing buildings at the top of the market.

Position decides price here to an unusual degree: the same villa layout facing the course, the park or an internal street sells at different prices, and the same flat layout over the park and over a car park likewise. The register records all of it.

Getting around

By car, and the location is the point: Al Khail Road reaches Downtown and Business Bay quickly, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Road reaches the Marina and the airport in reasonable runs, and the Mall of the Emirates is minutes. There is no Metro inside the community; the nearest stations are at the mall on Sheikh Zayed Road, a short drive, and buses connect. Inside the gate the boulevard carries the traffic, the neighbourhood loops are quiet, and the park's loop and the community's cycle paths are heavily used.

Day to day

The mall is the community's high street, with a supermarket, a cinema and the chains, and the boulevard and the neighbourhood centres carry cafes, supermarkets and the daily services. The park carries the weekends and most weekday evenings. Two of the city's larger international schools sit inside the gate, with more in Al Barsha a short drive away and nurseries in the neighbourhoods; a hospital sits inside the community as well. The golf club's restaurants and the boulevard's serve the evenings.

Who it suits

Families who want a villa or townhouse in the middle of the city with the school, the park and the mall inside the gate, and who will pay the community's prices for it. Buyers of apartments who want a new flat with a park at the door and a short run to Downtown. Owners who intend to live in what they buy, which most here do, and owners of the apartments who intend to let, for whom the community's tenant demand is deep.

It suits people less well who want the lowest price for a house, a beach, or a finished community: the edges are still being built and will be for some years.

Buying and renting here

The community is one of the busiest on the register, and the tables on this page show what each layout has actually fetched, with the busiest buildings over the last ninety days beneath them. The gap to read is position: course, park, boulevard or internal street. The register files a villa sold with its plot against the plot, and this page reads those sales correctly; the plot quarter trades in land and in houses still being built. Off-plan launches continue at the community's edges and in its newer apartment phases and are kept apart from resales here.

Service charges vary between the villa neighbourhoods and the apartment buildings and should be checked project by project. For tenants, the official index caps a renewal while a new lease follows the market, and in a community this sought-after the two can sit far apart.

Neighbourhoods and buildings to know

The early townhouse neighbourhoods are the entry point; the golf-facing and park-facing villa neighbourhoods and the plot quarter are the top end; the boulevard's apartment buildings and the newer towers by the park and the course are where most of the community's sales now happen. The table below shows which are trading most, and every project and building has its own page with every recorded price.