Jumeirah Village Circle

Jumeirah Village Circle is where a large part of Dubai's new middle lives. Nakheel drew it as a ring of villas and townhouses around parks, with apartment districts on the outer rings, and sold the plots to dozens of developers rather than building it themselves. The result is a community that has never stopped being built, that offers more homes at more price points than anywhere else in the city, and that rewards the buyer or tenant who looks at the building rather than the postcode.

The place

The circle is exactly that: a ring road with districts radiating from a centre, bounded by Al Khail Road on one side, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Road on another and Hessa Street on a third. Motor City and Dubai Sports City are next door, Jumeirah Village Triangle is across Hessa Street, and Al Barsha South, which is what the land registry still calls much of this area, runs along the northern edge.

The inner districts hold the townhouses and villas from the first phases, low and leafy, with parks threaded between them. The outer rings and the plots along the main roads carry the apartment buildings, which began as mid-rise and are now, in the newest phases, proper towers. Circle Mall sits at the centre and gave the community a middle it lacked for years.

What you get

The widest range in Dubai. Townhouses and villas in the inner ring, mostly from the community's first decade. Low-rise apartment buildings with a handful of floors, built by small developers, some very good and some not. Mid-rise blocks with pools and gyms. And, increasingly, high-rise towers from the city's largest developers, with studios and one-bedroom flats making up most of the new stock.

That variety is the community's whole character. Two buildings on the same street can differ in finish, management, service charges and the number of parking spaces per flat, and the recorded prices per square foot here spread wider than in almost any other district. The building is the decision; the community only sets the frame.

Getting around

There is no Metro station in the circle. Residents drive, and the community was laid out for it, with wide internal roads and parking under most buildings. The nearest stations are on the Red Line along Sheikh Zayed Road, a short drive away, and buses run through the community to reach them.

The known weakness is the exits. A ring with a limited number of ways out concentrates the evening traffic at a few junctions, and the entrances from Al Khail Road and Hessa Street back up at the peak. New exits have been added over the years and it is better than it was, but anyone moving here should try the drive at the hour they would actually make it. Downtown and the Marina are both reachable in reasonable time outside the peak; the airport is a longer run.

Day to day

Circle Mall has the cinema, the supermarket, the gyms and the food halls that residents once had to leave the community for. Beyond it the retail is in podiums and on ground floors: supermarkets in most districts, pharmacies, salons, laundries, and a density of cafes and small restaurants that has become one of the community's pleasures.

The parks are the other. There are dozens of them, small and spread through the districts, and they are used, by children after school, by dog walkers, by residents who moved here for a garden and got a shared one instead. There is a school inside the community and several more within a short drive in Jumeirah Village Triangle and Sports City, along with nurseries in many of the residential blocks. A golf course lies just over the boundary in Sports City.

Who it suits

First-time buyers, who find more home for the money here than anywhere within the same drive of the centre. Families in the townhouses and the larger flats, for the parks and the schools. Tenants who want a new building with a pool and a gym at a rent the older districts cannot match. And investors, who have made the circle one of the busiest resale and letting markets in the city on the strength of its yields.

It suits people less well who want a finished place. Cranes are part of the skyline and will be for years, and a flat that looks over a park today may look over a building site next year. It also suits people less well who need the Metro, or who want a quiet, established neighbourhood of the kind the Greens or the Springs offer.

Buying and renting here

The register is the place to start. Because the community trades so much, almost every building here has a deep record of completed sales, and this page and the building pages beneath it show what homes actually fetched, layout by layout. The spread between the best-managed buildings and the rest is visible in those prices, and it is the most useful thing a buyer can learn before viewing.

Off-plan is a large part of the market and is kept separate on this page for that reason: a launch price for a tower handing over in a few years is not evidence of what a completed flat is worth today. Buyers of finished homes should also ask about the owners' association, the service charge and the reserve fund, because those vary building by building and show up later in the rent a flat can command.

For tenants, a renewal is capped by the official index and a new lease is not, and in a community with this much new stock the two can sit far apart. Landlords should look at what comparable buildings, not comparable layouts, are actually letting for.

Buildings and districts to know

The first-phase townhouses in the inner districts remain the community's most settled streets. Among the apartments, Belgravia, Bloom Towers and the Five hotel tower are the names most people know, and the towers from the city's volume developers now stand along the outer ring and the main roads. The league table below ranks every building with enough recent sales by what its homes have actually fetched, and the rest are listed beneath it, each with its own page.