Emerald Hills, Dubai Hills Estate
Emerald Hills is a freehold villa-plot community by Emaar Properties in Dubai Hills Estate, part of Mohammed Bin Rashid City. Spread across 183 individual plots bordering the Dubai Hills Golf Club's championship course, the community lets owners design and build their own 5 to 9-bedroom villas and mansions rather than buying a fixed floor plan. Largely handed over since 2023, Emerald Hills is one of Dubai's most prestigious low-rise addresses. This guide covers the community's plots, villas and honest Airbnb income potential, with management available from a fee starting at 15%.
Developer
Emaar Properties
Type
Villa Plots (5-9BR)
Total Plots
183
Golf Course
Dubai Hills Golf Club (18-hole)
About Emerald Hills
Emerald Hills is a freehold villa-plot community by Emaar Properties within Dubai Hills Estate, bordering the community's own 18-hole Dubai Hills Golf Club championship course. Rather than selling finished units, Emaar sold 183 individual residential plots across multiple launch phases (Emerald Hills, Emerald Hills Plot II and Emerald Hills Phase 3), letting each buyer design and build a custom villa or mansion on their own plot. The community has largely been handed over and built out since 2023.
Entry-tier plots launched from AED 3,299,888 for roughly 7,500 sq ft, while golf-course-frontage plots launched from AED 8,898,000 for roughly 12,200 sq ft, per the project's own sales materials. Standard terms included a 10% booking deposit with a payment plan, and buyers were given a 24-month window to start and finish construction on their plot. Because Emerald Hills is a custom-build community rather than a fixed-unit development, no two villas are identical, and resale/rental listings can include everything from bare plots to fully finished mansions.
Emerald Hills should not be confused with two other 'Emerald'-branded developments Royale Stays covers elsewhere in Dubai: Binghatti Emerald in JVC, an apartment tower by Binghatti Developers, and Emerald Residence in Dubai Marina, an apartment tower by Naresco Group. Both are entirely different buildings, developers and areas that simply happen to share the word 'Emerald' in their name. Emerald Hills Plot II and Emerald Hills Phase 3 are not separate developments either, they are later launch phases of the same Emerald Hills community described in this guide.
Location & Nearby Landmarks
Emerald Hills sits within Dubai Hills Estate off Al Khail Road and Umm Suqeim Street, bordering the 18-hole, par-72 Dubai Hills Golf Club, a championship course designed by European Golf Design and managed by Troon Golf. The wider Dubai Hills Estate community sits roughly midway between Downtown Dubai and Dubai Marina, giving Emerald Hills residents reasonably central access to both by car, plus easy reach of Dubai Hills Mall and Dubai Hills Park.
Emerald Hills joins Royale Stays' wider Dubai Hills Estate guide cluster alongside Majestic Vistas and Palm Hills, two more Emaar villa communities within Dubai Hills Estate that Royale Stays covers, alongside The Grove by Iman, a separate apartment building in the same community. For a wider view of the area's short-term rental market, see Royale Stays' Airbnb management guide for Dubai Hills Estate.
Villa Types & Plots
Emerald Hills comprises 183 residential plots along the golf course, ranging from roughly 7,500 to 13,000 sq ft for standard plots up to around 20,000 sq ft or more for the largest golf-frontage plots, per the project's own sales materials. Because each plot is custom-built, villa sizes and layouts vary widely. Listings reviewed for this guide show predominantly 5 to 9-bedroom villas and mansions, with 6-bedroom configurations especially common, built in both modern and Arabesque architectural styles.
Buyers of remaining plots take on a self-build project rather than purchasing a finished home, and are expected to complete construction within a set window of the original terms. Anyone considering an already-built resale villa should confirm its exact specification directly with the seller, since there is no single standard floor plan across the community.
Amenities
Emerald Hills’ setting is built around the Dubai Hills Golf Club’s 18-hole championship course, with many plots offering direct golf-course frontage or views. Shared community amenities include a swimming pool, tennis court, basketball court and jogging track, set within extensive landscaped grounds that form part of Dubai Hills Estate’s 1.2 million sqm of fairways. Golf club membership is arranged separately from villa ownership through Dubai Hills Golf Club directly. Individual villas typically add their own private pools, gardens and multiple garages as part of the custom build.
Rental & Price Trends
Emerald Hills launched with entry-tier plots from AED 3,299,888 and golf-frontage plots from AED 8,898,000. Resale and long-term rental prices have risen well above those launch figures since 2023 handover. Per Bayut’s own listings and DLD transaction data, long-term villa rents in Emerald Hills currently run roughly AED 2,000,000 to 4,000,000 a year, with an average asking rent of around AED 2.9 million and an average DLD-recorded rent of around AED 1.7 million over the past 12 months. These are long-term annual lease figures, not short-term nightly rates, and this guide does not present them as such.
Owners weighing a specific villa’s numbers can run their own scenario through Royale Stays' ROI calculator.
Airbnb / Short-Term Rental Income Potential
No Airbnb, Booking.com or Agoda listing specifically tied to Emerald Hills turned up in this guide's research, despite the community being largely handed over since 2023. This likely reflects how Emerald Hills owners currently use their villas, custom-built ultra-luxury mansions on individually owned plots, which tend toward personal use or long-term leasing rather than short-term letting, rather than any restriction on doing so. Royale Stays does not currently have booking data specific to Emerald Hills to draw on, so this guide does not present a community income figure it cannot support.
Short-term letting anywhere in Dubai, including at Emerald Hills, runs through a DTCM (Department of Economy and Tourism) holiday home permit, professional photography, dynamic pricing and day-to-day guest communication. Emaar Properties is the developer behind Emerald Hills, not a hotel brand, so there is no policy reason, unlike Vida, the site's only confirmed prohibited brand, that an Emerald Hills villa couldn't be run as a licensed holiday home. Royale Stays' own villa-management experience currently centers on Mag City and DAMAC Hills/DAMAC Hills 2, and the company does not currently manage a unit at Emerald Hills, so this guide frames the opportunity honestly and prospectively rather than claiming an existing track record here.
The wider operational approach is covered in Royale Stays' guide to Airbnb property management in Dubai, including furnishing, photography, pricing, check-in and guest communications for a fee starting from 15%. Royale Stays' guide to the Dubai holiday home permit covers what the process and fees generally involve. Owners ready to move forward can submit their property for a free earnings estimate.
No third-party OTA listing was found for Emerald Hills at the time of research. No Royale Stays-managed unit currently exists at Emerald Hills; the company's current villa-management track record is centered on Mag City and DAMAC Hills/DAMAC Hills 2. Rental figures cited in this guide are long-term annual lease data per Bayut and DLD, not short-term nightly rates.
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