Case Study: Serenia Living Palm, Canal Front Residences, six senses and palm Jumeirah

Starting with one of the most premium communities in Dubai, Palm Jumeirah - the palm tree-shaped waterfront haven. Here, we will talk about the projects on the crescent, which are sections facing outwards to the sea with some hotels and huge resorts such as The Atlantis, as well as some other residential buildings.

READY PROJECTS

COMPREHENSION -1

From the above statistical data collected for the existing projects on Palm Jumeirah, we can see the time it was launched and sold in the off plan stage, the price per square foot it was sold for, the handover year of the project, and the average price during the time of the handover, the current average price, the current rental ROI plus the appreciation it achieved from the launch price, and the yearly appreciation rate. This data conveys the message that out of the 12 listed projects only four performed well on the capital appreciation and those are mostly in the higher end range of the price segment, the best one is Atlantis The Royal project, where investors made an average of 119% gain with an yearly appreciation rate of 30% which outperformed the Dubai market. The prices in this project have now touched near 9,200 dirhams per square foot, and many agents have notified that the prices in Palm Jumeirah are at 9,000 to 10,000 dirhams per square foot, which is true but only in the case of this particular Atlantis The Royal project, not the whole of Palm Jumeirah. As is visible from the above informational statistics, a bunch of projects are still hovering around 2,000 to 2,500 dirhams for many years. The mistake a lot of people make is that they unknowingly indulge in the misleading information provided by agents that if a price 9,000 dirhams per square foot price has achieved in Palm Jumeirah, which is a waterfront location so all upcoming waterfront locations such as Emaar Beachfront, Dubai Maritime City, Rashid Yachts and Marina, Dubai Islands, etc will also achieve that price eventually, which is a completely wrong way of analogy because those projects are no comparison to what The Royal Atlantis is, and is not an apples-to-apples comparison.

COMPREHENSION - 2

We see that the gross ROI on rentals is between 4.5% to 7%, which are the realistic long-term rental numbers from a high-end waterfront property in Dubai. Apart from The Royal Atlantis, no other project achieved any appreciation at the handover time from the launch price. The other three projects with significant positive appreciation, like the W Residences, The 8 Palm, and the Serena Residences, achieved the hike in the prices much after the handover time with the recent boom in Dubai real estate Post-Covid. Moreover, despite the recent price boom in Dubai still some projects on the list still failed to witness any increase in the prices after handover. Now, this is where the project's in-depth real values and factors played a role. Possibly, in such projects the properties were not offering any value add-on features that made new buyers attracted to pay more for what was already sold to previous investors to push the prices up. Further, these value add-ons in real estate could be:

• Positive feedback from end users
• Better quality and maintenance
• More functional layouts
• High levels of amenities.

COMPREHENSION - 3

It matters what the state of the real estate market is in the year when the project is launched or the year it gets handed over. For example, here the projects such as Kempinski Residences and Anantara Residences did not perform great numbers on appreciation despite having globally known hospitality brands associated with it. This is because they were launched or delivered at the worst time point of the Dubai real estate market in 2008 and 2014 when the markets crashed, the sentiments were low, and there were no buyers to pay the much higher prices. Somehow, they still managed to at least deliver the project because others that were launched at that time did not even see the light and were cancelled or even demolished midway.

Area plot chart or 3d line chart

If we look carefully at the full price per square foot graphs of these projects for the last 10 years, the price now has just touched what it was back in 2014, so someone who bought this property in 2014 is probably getting the same price for that property in 2025. But it is not that no one made money from these projects, investors who knew that the price went substantially down in 2020 saw the surge in the Dubai market Post-Covid and picked up these properties at cheap prices because they knew that intrinsically these properties hold better value because of the brand and location and they made significant appreciation in the next four years.

Serenia Living and Six Senses

Now, moving on to the other chapter that is the under construction or off-plan projects. The first is the Serenia Living, which is the only project in off-plan project that had a significant number of resale transactions to make a judgment that the project has gained an average of 37% appreciation and a yearly appreciation of 12.2%. There could be many reasons for this achievement, but the number one reason is that the developer behind this project launched the project at just 3,000 dirhams per square foot back in 2022. Though they could have launched the project for around 5,000 dirhams per square foot as the market was already in good shape in that year but they realized a gap.

The new projects that were launched around that time were in a much higher price range, making it unaffordable for a lot of the investors like the Six Senses project, which was launched at 5,700 dirhams per square foot in the same year. So, those first-time buyers of Serenia Living realized that they are getting a project at the price of 3,000 dirhams in an area where all the new projects are coming at more than 5,000 dirhams per square foot.

Now, that is the winning strategy: buying a lower-priced property in an area where other similar properties are higher priced. It is very simple to understand but hard to find. Maybe we cannot compare Serenia Living with the Six Senses project, but for the other projects on the list, such as SLS Residences, Ocean House, Luce the Light, One Crescent are still quite comparable but was sold at much lower price and the cherry on the top was the location within the location.

All these projects are on the crescent, but Serenia Living's plot was just next to the crescent from the fronds, so it has a much shorter travel time from the city. Moreover, it is just adjacent to The Atlantis Resort on one side and The Royal Atlantis Residences on the other side, hence making it in a more prime section of a prime area. From this top section, the views to the fronds will look like the perfect palm shape as well as the full marina skyline, and in Palm Jumeirah the premium is attached to the views. For an analogy, just like how in a cricket stadium the best seats are the ones looking straight to the pitch, the same is true with this section of Palm. Since the buildings are nearing completion all those wealthy visitors who come to visit The Atlantis attraction, The Wild Wadi Water Park, and The Royal Atlantis will have a glance on this project on the way and will get intrigued by it.

STATISTICAL INSIGHTS OF 2025

Serenia Living has an average resale of 37% in 2025, with a few even touching 100% appreciation. The price last November was 3,800 dirhams, which now in March is almost 4,200 dirhams, and by handover time, which is the end of this year, it is expected to reach 5,000 dirhams per square foot.

The Six Senses Palm Jumeirah has also appreciated by 14%, but one point to note here is that they gave a payment plan of 40% during construction and 60% on handover. With that in consideration the investors who exited so far during the construction have made the average 14% on the 40% they have paid so their return on equity is 35% on the capital and the same if we apply for Serenia Living which was on a 50:50 payment plan, the return on equity comes out to be 73%.

It is expected that once the Six Senses Palm project is delivered, it can reach the price levels of the super prime projects like Orla by Omniyat and Armani Beach Residences, which are purely meant for luxury end users and are sold in between 8,000 to 9,000 dirhams per square foot. So, we can conclude that the learning is to buy lower-priced projects in an area with higher-priced projects.

Finally, let’s consider another area located next to Palm Jumeirah called Al Wasl and Al Satwa, where we can witness the Dubai canal coming from the Business Bay to the sea. In this section next to the Safa Park, there is a project called Canal Front Residences, which was launched in 2017 but saw significant delays as the developer behind this project, Meydan Group, got into financial trouble. Eventually, it was taken over by Nakheel, and the project is now getting delivered after 7 years. Despite an initial bad run, this project is now witnessing resales, and the prices have jumped from 2,200 dirhams in the last year to 2,900 dirhams this year. 

Such a sudden jump is because it is the most affordable property in an area where all the other projects that are coming are high-end such as Eden House, Four Seasons, Mistress Sea Residences, and Cavalli Couture where the average price per square foot is more than 5,000 dirhams per square foot and an average property at 20 million dirhams, hence many agents brand it as the Billionaires Row. So, a person can enter an area where the average price of a property is more than 5,000 dirhams per square foot but he can get it at 2,900 dirhams and in the same location if not with the same luxury finishings, but can still be renovated at an additional cost, so it does make sense.

The above insights and pieces of information combined with the statistical data will help in providing a more detailed understanding of Dubai’s real estate to skip the wrong decisions and choose the right investment. For further assistance and guidance, you can reach out to a reliable and trusted source, Dubai Housing, that will help broaden the horizon of your understanding by enhancing your informational mindset with their support and knowledgeable bits of advice.