Palm Jumeirah

Palm Jumeirah is the address the rest of the world knows. Nakheel built it out into the Gulf in the shape of a palm, a trunk of apartment buildings, sixteen fronds of villas and a crescent of hotels holding the sea back, and it became the city's postcard before the sand had settled. It is also a real neighbourhood with a school run, a supermarket and a traffic problem, and the guide below is about that place rather than the postcard.

The place

The trunk is the spine: a broad road with apartment buildings on both sides, the older ones on the beach side, the newer and taller ones at the entrance and along the inner shore. The fronds branch off it, each a single road of villas with the sea at the end and a beach behind every house. The crescent is the breakwater, reached by a tunnel from the trunk's tip, and is almost entirely hotels and their residences, from the Atlantis pair at the centre to the quieter resorts along the arms.

Nakheel Mall sits at the top of the trunk, the monorail runs its length from the gateway to the crescent, and a promenade wraps the outer shore. The island's Golden Mile buildings on the trunk carry the daily shops and cafes; the beach clubs and the restaurants at the hotels carry the rest.

What you get

Two markets that happen to share an island. On the trunk, apartments: the original Shoreline buildings, large and plain and on the beach; the Golden Mile and the marina buildings further up; and the new towers at the entrance and on the inner shore, which have brought the city's dearest flats per square foot to the island, some of them with hotel operators attached. On the fronds, villas: the Garden Homes on the inner plots, the Signature Villas at the tips with the largest beaches, and a small number of townhouses at the base of some fronds.

Views and water decide everything. A frond villa is priced by its beach, its width and whether it looks at the skyline or the open sea; a trunk flat by its floor and whether it faces the beach or the road. Many frond villas have been rebuilt from the plot up, and the register records the difference between an original and a rebuild plainly.

Getting around

One road in and one road out. The trunk carries every car on the island, and at the peak, on weekend evenings and on any day the crescent's hotels are full, it backs up from the gateway. Residents learn the hours and keep to them. The monorail runs the length of the trunk and reaches the crescent, and connects at the gateway to the tram, which reaches the Metro's Red Line; it is used, though most residents drive.

Off the island, Al Sufouh Road and Sheikh Zayed Road are minutes away, the Marina and the Media City offices are close, Downtown is a longer run and the airport longer still.

Day to day

Nakheel Mall has the supermarket, the cinema and the chain restaurants; the Golden Mile and the trunk's smaller centres have the rest. The hotels' restaurants and beach clubs are the island's evenings, and residents of most buildings and fronds have beach access of their own. There is no school on the island; families use the schools along Al Sufouh and in Umm Suqeim, a short drive away, and nurseries operate on the trunk.

The sea is the point. Most homes here have a beach at the end of the garden or the lift, and the island's life is lived on it.

Who it suits

Buyers who want the sea at the door and are paying for it knowingly. Owners of frond villas who intend to live in them, which most now do. Owners of trunk flats who intend to let, because the island's furnished and short-stay market is the deepest in the city. Buyers from abroad, for whom the name does half the work.

It suits people less well who want a short commute to Downtown or the airport, who cannot live with the trunk's traffic, or who want a quiet street away from tourists.

Buying and renting here

The register is unusually useful here because the island's homes vary so much under one name. A rebuilt Signature Villa at a frond tip and an original Garden Home two plots in are different markets; an entrance tower flat and a Shoreline flat are different markets; and the tables on this page and the building and frond pages beneath it show what each actually fetched, layout by layout. Service charges on the trunk vary widely between the older buildings and the new operated ones, and a hotel-branded residence carries its own rules and costs.

Villa buyers should know that the register files a house sold with its plot against the plot, and that this page reads those sales correctly. Off-plan launches continue on the inner shore and are kept apart from resales here. For tenants, the official index caps a renewal while a new lease follows the market, and many trunk buildings permit furnished short-stay lets, which shapes what a landlord can expect.

Buildings and fronds to know

The Shoreline buildings and the Golden Mile are the island's older stock, the marina buildings and Oceana its middle, and the towers at the entrance and along the inner shore, several of them by the city's luxury developers with hotel operators attached, its top end. On the fronds the Garden Homes and the Signature Villas are the two products, priced by frond and by position on it. The table below shows where the island's sales are actually happening, and every building and frond has its own page.