Saadiyat Island · Abu Dhabi
Marsa Al Saadiyat
An address by Aldar Properties in Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi. We answer with the payment schedule, the handover date and what the purchase costs end to end.
- DeveloperAldar Properties
- CommunitySaadiyat Island
- EmirateAbu Dhabi
The address
The last part of Saadiyat to be built
Saadiyat Island already has the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Zayed National Museum and teamLab Phenomena on it, and NYU Abu Dhabi teaching a short way from them. Marsa Al Saadiyat is the part of the island that had not been built yet — 6.4 million square metres along eight kilometres of water, opened by Aldar as master developer in July 2026.
Its name was changed at the launch. The district had been drawn as Saadiyat Marina District; the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi directed that it be called Marsa Al Saadiyat instead, after the word this coast has used for a harbour for as long as there have been boats on it.
The ground
What is actually being built
A marina of up to 350 berths, the largest in the emirate. Five and a half kilometres of beach. A promenade of shops and restaurants running a kilometre along the water, a yacht club and two hotels, and a theatre, Dar al Funoon, seating more than six thousand — designed by Frank Gehry, opening in 2030.
Away from the water the district is laid out for walking rather than driving: around 140 kilometres of connected paths, a 46-kilometre cycling loop with every home within 150 metres of it, and a 73,800 m² Central Park. Two private schools, a public one and six nurseries. An underground Etihad Rail station brings the island onto the national network.
Every figure on this page
comes from the Abu Dhabi Media Office release of 22 July 2026 or from Aldar's own project page. Nothing here is taken from a brochure, and no distance is quoted that we have not measured ourselves.
Buying from abroad
What a buyer from abroad gets by law, not by promise
Full ownership. Since 2019 nationals of countries outside the UAE and the Gulf have held property in Abu Dhabi's investment zones outright: to sell, to mortgage, to pass on. Saadiyat Island is one of those zones.
Money guarded by the law, not by the developer. Every instalment on an off-plan home goes into the project's escrow account under the regulator, ADREC. It can be drawn only for the construction and only as it progresses — never before 20 % of the works are done. Since 2025 the account may not pay for the land or for brokers' commissions.
Taxes. No personal income tax. No capital gains tax and no inheritance tax for individuals. No annual tax on owning a home; a 5 % municipal fee is charged on rent — to the tenant, not the owner.
What the transaction itself costs. Registering an off-plan purchase: 2 % of the price, split equally between seller and buyer. We list this and the other lines before you ask.
A residence visa. An owner of property from AED 2 million may apply for a long-term residence visa; off-plan and mortgaged homes count under the Abu Dhabi Residents Office rules. The term and the procedure change — we send the conditions in force on the day you ask, not last year's.
You are not the first. ADREC reports that non-residents of 116 nationalities bought in Abu Dhabi in the first half of 2026, with the United Kingdom, China, Russia, the United States, Germany and France among the largest sources.
Formats
Five ways of living here, and they are not variants of one
Private mansions. Villas. A hillside community of standalone villas standing 22.5 metres above the shoreline. Waterfront apartments. And branded residences with an international hotel operator, which Aldar has not yet named.
Which of the five suits you decides everything that follows it — the schedule, the handover, the outlook. It is worth settling before the price list rather than after.
Be sent yours first
Tell us how many bedrooms you want and whether you are looking at the water or the hillside. When Aldar releases the layouts and the price list for that format, you get them the same day.
Before you sign
The four things worth checking on any off-plan purchase here
Who the developer is, and what the project is called in the register rather than in the advertising. The project's registration number. The escrow account the money runs through before handover — its number for any registered project is published in ADREC's Dari register. And the company putting the advertisement in front of you.
A regulator here requires all of that on the advertisement itself. Most pages about this district carry none of it.
The project number and the escrow account are issued when a project is opened for sale. Marsa Al Saadiyat had not reached that point when this page was written, so both are printed below as soon as they exist, and this page says so rather than leaving a gap where they belong.
Prices
What makes a figure a price rather than a rumour
Three things: the currency it is quoted in, the day it was taken, and where it came from. Dirhams first, because that is the unit the contract is written in. A converted figure is our own arithmetic and says so, with the rate and the date of the rate beside it.
Once a price passes its shelf life it comes off this page rather than ageing quietly in place.
Location
Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi
Marsa Al Saadiyat
Distances here are measured on the map from the plot itself, and each one says how it was measured. None of them is copied out of a brochure.
Measured by us.
Talk to us
Sales open in the second half of this year
Leave a name and a number and tell us which format you are after. A phone number from any country is fine, and nothing about it is rewritten on the way in.