What The Acres actually is
Dubai has never had a shortage of future villa communities that promise greenery. It has had a shortage of ones that give up land to deliver it.
The Acres gives more than a quarter of its masterplan — over 28% of the community is dedicated to open space, with more than 2.5 times the usual amount of green space per person. Every villa is planned within a few minutes’ walk of a park, while walking and cycling routes run through the community rather than being added around the edges.
This is what is actually there, what is actually built so far, and who the community is genuinely for.
Seven gardens, not one park
Most masterplans have a park. The Acres has seven, and each one is built to do something different.
The Arrival Garden is the front door and the civic centre at once — palm-lined boulevards leading in, a forest theatre, and a mosque plaza. It sets the register before you have reached a single home.
The Village Garden is where you end up without planning to. Markets, waterfront seating and a retail promenade, arranged so that buying bread and sitting for an hour are the same trip.
The Lagoon Garden is the one people talk about. Swimmable lagoons with floating decks — not water as a view, but water you get into, five minutes from your front door.
The Nature Garden is the most quietly interesting of the seven. Wetlands, natural ponds, dry wadi trails and a wellness garden. It takes its cues from how water actually behaves in this landscape rather than importing a European lawn and irrigating it into submission.
The Lost Garden was designed for children old enough to disappear for an hour. Treehouses, land art trails, crafting stations, forest terraces, water features. It is the part of the plan that will decide whether families stay for ten years or three.
The Edible Garden grows herbs you can pick, with al fresco dining set among them.
The Perfume Garden is planted for scent — the one sense masterplans almost never design for.
Holding all seven together is the Halo Loop, a continuous park that encircles the lagoons and links the neighbourhoods to one another. The distinction matters more than it sounds. A park you drive to gets used at weekends. A loop that runs past your home and connects you to everywhere else gets used on a Tuesday evening, without anyone deciding to.
What is actually being built
Concept is easy to publish. Contracts are not.
Meraas has awarded AED 2.4 billion in main construction contracts for the community — 371 villas of three to five bedrooms, and 186 residences of five to seven bedrooms in The Acres Estates. United Engineering Construction is delivering the villas; GCC Contracting is building the Estates. Both are contractors with the scale to finish what they start.
Khalid Al Malik, Chief Executive of Dubai Holding Real Estate, framed the award plainly: it reflects “the strength of demand for premium villa communities in Dubai.”
That demand is not marketing language. Villa prices across Dubai rose 12.1% over the past year, to an average of around AED 13.6 million. Villas are now the strongest-performing residential segment in the city, ahead of apartments — and the reason is structural rather than speculative. Dubai expects 175,000 to 225,000 new residents this year, weighted heavily towards families, and families want gardens. Villa land is finite in a way apartment land is not.
Two communities, not one
The name covers two distinct products, and it is worth being clear about which one you are looking at.
The Acres is the villa community — standalone three, four and five bedroom homes, each with a private pool, a two-car garage and a maid’s room. Launch pricing opened at AED 6.5 million for a three bedroom.
The Acres Estates is the enclave at the centre of the masterplan — five, six and seven bedroom homes across two collections, Amber and Ivory. Every Estates home has a private elevator, a driver’s room, and both a show kitchen and a separate service kitchen. Launch pricing opened at AED 14.5 million.
The Estates sit in the middle of the plan rather than on its edge, screened by the park system. It produces an outcome worth noticing: here, the largest homes are also the quietest, because they are furthest from every boundary road. In most communities the premium sits on the perimeter, facing out. At The Acres the premium faces in.
Every home in both communities clears the AED 2 million Golden Visa threshold comfortably — which for a family relocating from London, Mumbai or Riyadh is not a detail but the entire point.
Where it sits, and why that matters
The Acres occupies the stretch of Dubailand running from Global Village down towards Al Qudra. This is not new ground. Arabian Ranches has been here for two decades and has the resale history to prove families will live this far from the coast if the community is good enough. Al Barari proved the same side of the city could carry genuinely green, low-density living at the top of the market.
What has changed is the concentration. Within a few years of each other, Sobha Reserve, The Wilds, Havens by Aldar, Athlon by Aldar and The Acres have all committed to landscape-led villa communities in the same corridor. Five developers reaching the same conclusion independently is about as strong a signal as this market gives.
Three roads define the site — Sheikh Zayed Bin Hamdan Al Nahyan Street to the north, Latifa Bint Hamdan Road to the east, and Emirates Road past the south-eastern corner. Three separate ways out is worth considerably more at eight in the morning than a quoted drive time to Downtown, which assumes a road that is empty and never is.
The longer argument is policy. The Dubai 2040 Urban Master Plan names Al Maktoum International Airport and Expo City as the city’s future growth engine, and Al Maktoum entered large-scale construction this year on its way to handling more than 260 million passengers annually. The southern axis is where Dubai has decided to grow. The Acres sits inside it, not beside it.
Where construction actually is
This is the paragraph most write-ups leave out.
As of the inspection on 14 May 2026, the Real Estate Regulatory Agency recorded construction progress at 14.75%. Not a render, not a projection — a verified figure from the regulator.
Meraas gives estimated construction completion as August 2028 on its own payment schedule, and the final instalment on every unit falls due in that month. Anyone buying today is buying roughly two years of construction, and should price that into their thinking rather than around it.
The landscape is the part to watch. Planting is the one element of a community like this that cannot be accelerated, and the gardens are the entire proposition. Renders show them mature. Reality will take longer, and that gap is the honest risk in buying here early.
Who it is for
The family relocating to Dubai who wants their children outdoors rather than in a lift lobby, and who can wait until 2028 to move in. The Dubai family trading up from a townhouse who has decided that space and greenery matter more than being fifteen minutes from the office. The long-hold investor who wants a tenant that stays five years rather than five months — because families who put children in local schools do not move casually.
Who it is not for
Anyone who needs to move now. Sobha Reserve, a few minutes away, is handing over this year. Anyone whose working life requires being in the centre of the city daily — this is a commute, and pretending otherwise helps nobody. And anyone who would find the remaining payment schedule uncomfortable if their circumstances changed, because off-plan rewards people who can hold.
For everybody else, the thing worth understanding about The Acres is the decision that shaped it. A developer looked at the most valuable land in its portfolio and gave more than a quarter of it away to water, wetland and trees. Everything else in this community follows from that.
Figures on construction progress are from the Real Estate Regulatory Agency inspection of 14 May 2026. Contract values and unit counts are from Dubai Holding. Prices quoted are launch prices and are not a guide to current market value.