Gated communities · Dubai
Gated communities in Dubai
28 of them, with what a home in each actually sold for over the last twelve months and what it rents for, from the Dubai Land Department’s registers. And — the part the top-ten lists leave out — what kind of gate it really is, because a guarded perimeter and a master community with gated streets inside it are not the same thing to live in.
Read this first
“Gated” is not one thing
Every list of Dubai's gated communities puts a guarded estate and an open master community in the same column. They are different products, they cost different money, and the difference is the thing worth knowing before you sign.
A gate at the perimeter means one controlled way in for the whole community. A guard or a barrier stands between the public road and every house behind it, deliveries are logged or waved through at that one point, and the streets inside carry residents and their visitors and almost nobody else. Arabian Ranches, Al Barari and Jumeirah Islands work this way.
A gate by neighbourhood means the master community itself is a piece of the city — public boulevards, shops, schools, anyone may drive through — and the villa quarters inside it have their own gates. Dubai Hills Estate is the clearest case: Sidra and Maple are gated, the boulevard past them is not, and the apartment blocks have a lobby rather than a gatehouse. A buyer who reads “Dubai Hills Estate is gated” and buys an apartment there has bought something else.
And a gate is a spectrum, not a fact. Some are manned around the clock and check every visitor against a resident’s name; some are a barrier that lifts for a windscreen tag and stands open at school run. Nobody publishes which is which, and it changes. When you visit, go on a weekday evening and watch what the gate actually does — then ask the owners’ association what it costs to run, because that sits in the master community service charge you will pay every year.
The list
Every gated community, dearest first
Sorted by what homes in them actually sold for, not by anyone's opinion of them. Each name opens its area guide, which carries the full register — prices by layout, the buildings inside, and what we hold there.
| Community | Gated | What it is | Resale AED/sqft, 12 months | Resales, 12 months | Rent, 3 B/R |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Palm Jumeirah | By neighbourhood | The trunk is a public road. Each frond has a guarded entrance and the beach villas sit behind it; the shoreline apartments do not. | 2,701 | 669 | — |
| Tilal Al Ghaf | Whole community | Guarded entries onto a swimmable man-made lagoon. | 2,482 | 193 | — |
| Dubai Hills Estate | By neighbourhood | Public boulevards run through it. The villa neighbourhoods — Sidra, Maple, Golf Place, Parkway Vistas — have their own gates; the apartment blocks do not. | 2,304 | 1,186 | — |
| The Lakes | Whole community | Gated clusters in Emirates Living, beside the Springs and older than most of this list. | 2,208 | 24 | — |
| Nad Al Sheba | By neighbourhood | Nad Al Sheba Gardens is gated. The older Nad Al Sheba villas sit on public streets. | 2,170 | 211 | — |
| Mohammed Bin Rashid City | By neighbourhood | District One, the lagoon villas, is guarded. The rest of the district is ordinary city street. | 2,038 | 1,594 | — |
| Meydan | By neighbourhood | Gated villa neighbourhoods behind the racecourse; the canal apartment district is on open roads. | 1,954 | 1,119 | — |
| Arabian Ranches 3 | Whole community | The newest phase — Ruba, Spring, the Elie Saab villas — gated as each hands over. | 1,870 | 233 | — |
| Al Barari | Whole community | A single guarded entrance into a planted valley — the greenest thing on this list, and priced accordingly. | 1,738 | 168 | — |
| Mudon | Whole community | Gated entries; townhouses and villas around a central park. | 1,676 | 392 | — |
| The Springs | Whole community | Fifteen numbered gated clusters, built to a handful of repeated layouts — the volume end of Emirates Living. | 1,666 | 378 | 235,000 |
| Jumeirah Golf Estates | Whole community | Guarded gates, two championship golf courses inside the perimeter. | 1,663 | 195 | — |
| Villanova | Whole community | Amaranta, La Rosa and La Violeta — gated townhouse clusters, sold to families in volume. | 1,515 | 246 | — |
| Arabian Ranches | Whole community | Gatehouses on the entries; one of the first villa communities Dubai built on this pattern, and long the one the rest were measured against. | 1,514 | 21 | — |
| Damac Hills | Whole community | Guarded entries around the golf course at its centre. | 1,432 | 858 | — |
| Arabian Ranches 2 | Whole community | The second phase, on its own entries behind the first. | 1,422 | 79 | — |
| Town Square | By neighbourhood | The park and the town centre are public. The townhouse clusters — Zahra, Hayat, Naseem — sit behind barriers. | 1,352 | 991 | 145,000 |
| The Valley | Whole community | Newer townhouses on the Al Ain road, gated phase by phase as they complete. | 1,338 | 544 | 135,000 |
| Rukan | Whole community | Gated townhouse and villa clusters out in the Dubailand belt. | 1,330 | 281 | — |
| Al Furjan | By neighbourhood | A master community of gated sub-communities — Murooj, Quortaj — with public roads between them and apartment towers along the edges. | 1,306 | 717 | — |
| Serena | Whole community | Casa Dora and Casa Viva — gated townhouse clusters in a Mediterranean idiom. | 1,277 | 57 | — |
| Reem | Whole community | Mira and Mira Oasis — eight gated townhouse clusters around a lake. | 1,225 | 190 | — |
| Damac Hills 2 | Whole community | Gated entries, well inland — the trade is space for the drive. | 1,062 | 1,141 | 90,000 |
| Motor City | By neighbourhood | The apartment quarter is open to drive into; the villa quarter is gated. | 1,000 | 894 | 180,000 |
| Remraam | Whole community | A gated apartment community, not a villa one: low-rise blocks around courtyards. | 942 | 272 | — |
| Jumeirah Islands | Whole community | Guarded entries; the villas stand on islands in man-made lakes. | — | — | — |
| Jumeirah Park | Whole community | Barrier entries; villas on plots around a run of parks. | — | — | — |
| The Villa | Whole community | Gated villas on unusually large plots, many of them owner-built to their own design. | — | — | — |
Access as at September 2026 — gates belong to each developer or owners’ association and change without notice, so treat the middle column as a description and not a guarantee. The price is the median per square foot of completed resales registered over the last twelve months, for the 25 communities here with twenty or more of them; the other 3 are quieter than that in a year, and carry their figures over a longer window on their own guide. Rents are median annual Ejari contracts, shown only for the 5 whose DLD rent area is their own: the rent register files a home under an area rather than a community, an area can serve several communities at once, and where it does the figure would be the area’s and not the community’s, so the row is left blank. A dash means the register cannot say, not that there is nothing there.
Not on the list
Three names you expected, and why they have no row
Emirates Hills, The Meadows and Victory Heights are all gated, and none of them is in the table above.
Every name in the table above is a community on the place register this site is built on — the same register behind the area guides, the building pages and the reports — and clicking it opens that community’s own page. Those three are not on it. They are neighbourhoods filed under a larger name, so there is no page to send you to and no figure the register will put against the word. Naming them anyway, with nothing behind the name, is what the lists this page is trying to beat already do. Their neighbours are here: The Springs and The Lakes stand beside the first two, and the villa side of Dubai Sports City beside the third.
Off-plan communities still selling from the developer are thin here for the same reason. A community needs completed resales on the register before it has a price worth printing, so the newest gates — the ones announced this year — will appear on this page as they start trading, not as they start advertising.
Questions people ask
Gated communities in Dubai, answered
Are there gated communities in Dubai?
Yes — most of the city's villa and townhouse stock sits behind a gate of some kind. 28 communities on the Dubai Land Department's register are gated, 20 of them at a single perimeter with one controlled way in, and the rest as gated neighbourhoods inside a master community whose main roads are public.
Which is the most expensive gated community in Dubai?
By what homes actually sold for over the last twelve months, Palm Jumeirah — a median of AED 2,701 per square foot on 669 recorded resales. That is the registered price, not an asking price, and it moves; the table on this page is rebuilt from the register twice a day.
What is the cheapest gated community in Dubai?
Of the gated communities with a twelve-month figure, Remraam is the lowest recorded price per square foot at AED 942. Price per square foot is not the same as price: a large townhouse in a cheap community costs more than a small one in a dear community, so read it beside the rent column and the plot you would actually be buying.
Is Damac Hills a gated community?
Yes. Damac Hills has guarded entries around the golf course at its centre, and Damac Hills 2, further inland, is gated too. Both are on this page with their recorded prices.
Is Dubai Hills Estate gated?
Partly, and this is the distinction most lists miss. Dubai Hills Estate is a master community with public boulevards running through it; the villa neighbourhoods inside — Sidra, Maple, Golf Place, Parkway Vistas — have their own gates, and the apartment buildings do not. If a gate matters to you, the community name is not enough: ask which neighbourhood.
Can a foreigner buy a home in a gated community in Dubai?
In the freehold areas, yes, on the same terms as anyone else — every community on this page is freehold, and the buyer pays the Dubai Land Department 4% transfer fee. Residency is not required to buy.
Do gated communities cost more in service charges?
They usually carry two bills rather than one: the building or cluster service charge, and a master community charge covering the gate, the guards, the landscaping and the roads inside the perimeter. Villa charges are typically levied on the plot or built area rather than per square foot of apartment, and vary widely between communities — ask for the current schedule before you commit.
Every community here has an area guide with its full register behind it. To go straight to what is on the market, there are villas for sale, townhouses for sale and the same two to rent. What the 4% transfer fee and the rest of the bill come to is in the cost of buying, where a foreign national can own at all is in the freehold areas, and where a budget goes furthest, gated or not, is in the cheapest areas. Weighing a gate against the metro or the sea? The best areas to live sets them side by side.