Tilal Al Ghaf

Tilal Al Ghaf is a lagoon with a community built around it. Majid Al Futtaim, the group behind the city's malls, made it their first residential master plan, and the decisions show: a swimmable lagoon at the centre with a beach on its shore, ghaf trees along the streets, a walkable core, and houses rather than towers. It sits on the Dubailand side of Hessa Street, beside Dubai Sports City and across the road from Damac Hills, and it is still being built, which is the most important thing to know about it. The name is Arabic for "the hills of the ghaf", the drought-hardy tree of the sands that is the country's national tree and lines the community's streets.

The place

The community lies beside Dubai Sports City, with Damac Hills and Motor City across Hessa Street and the larger malls of the district, including one of the developer's own, a short drive. The lagoon is the centre of everything. A long stretch of clear water with a sand beach, a promenade and the community's cafes along its edge, it is the reason most buyers came and the reason the homes nearest to it command what they do. Around it the community is laid out in named neighbourhoods of townhouses and villas on quiet streets, with parks and cycle paths between them and the ghaf, the country's national tree, planted along the roads.

The town centre at the lagoon's edge has grown in stages, with shops, cafes and a school already open and more planned.

What you get

Townhouses and villas only. There are no apartment towers here, and none are planned in the parts of the community sold so far. The townhouses come in the developer's standard layouts in the neighbourhoods furthest from the water; the villas range from family houses on internal streets to large plots on the lagoon's edge and, on its own island, a small number of mansions that are among the dearest homes on the city's inland side.

The finish is the developer's own and is consistent across the neighbourhoods, which buyers coming from communities where every developer was different tend to notice. Many homes have been handed over; others are still under construction, and buying here means choosing between a finished house and an off-plan one with a handover date.

Getting around

Tilal Al Ghaf is a driving community. Hessa Street and Sheikh Zayed bin Hamdan Al Nahyan Street connect it to the city, with Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Road close by. The Marina and the Media City offices are a manageable commute outside the peak, Downtown is longer, and the airport is a long run. There is no Metro and no tram, and none are near.

Inside the community the streets are quiet and the distances are shorter than in the older golf communities nearby. The lagoon, the school and the town centre are walkable from a good part of the housing, and the cycle paths are used.

Day to day

A school opened inside the community early, which mattered more than any other single thing to the families who moved in first, and nurseries followed. Sports City's schools are next door. The town centre has a supermarket and cafes, the lagoon has its beach club and its promenade, and the parks carry the playgrounds and the sports courts. For most other shopping residents drive to the malls of the surrounding district.

The lagoon is the community's daily life. Residents swim in it, paddle on it, run around it and eat beside it, and it gives an inland community the thing that only the coast offered before.

Who it suits

Families who want a new house with a garden in a finished-feeling community that is still young, and who value the lagoon over a golf course. Buyers comparing the newer villa communities on this side of the city, Arabian Ranches Three, Damac Hills, Mudon and the Valley among them, who want a single developer's consistency. Owners who intend to hold rather than let, because most homes here are lived in by the people who bought them.

It suits tenants less well for the moment, simply because there are fewer homes to let than in the older communities; that will change as more houses hand over. It suits people less well who need to be close to Downtown or the airport, or who want a flat.

Buying and renting here

Two markets run at once here and this page keeps them apart. Finished homes change hands as ordinary resales. Homes still under construction change hands as off-plan resales, and the register records those against the plot rather than the house, which is why the tables on this page read a villa sold with its land as the sale it is. Buyers of off-plan homes should know the handover date, the payment schedule remaining and the developer's snagging process; buyers of finished homes should walk the neighbourhood at the hour they would live in it, because construction continues nearby.

The lagoon carries a premium that the register shows plainly: a house on the water and the same layout three streets back are different markets under one name. Service charges are set by the developer's community management and are consistent across the neighbourhoods. For the homes that are let, the official index caps a renewal while a new lease follows the market.

Neighbourhoods to know

The townhouse neighbourhoods on the outer streets were the first to hand over and remain the community's entry point. The villa neighbourhoods closer to the water followed, and the lagoon-front plots and the island mansions are the top of the market. The tables below list every project the register knows by name, with what its homes have actually fetched.