Areas
Al Warsan: Buying Guide, Prices & Listings
One of Dubai's original freehold areas, home to International City, Warsan Village and the emirate's busiest affordable off-plan pipeline.
Areas
One of Dubai's original freehold areas, home to International City, Warsan Village and the emirate's busiest affordable off-plan pipeline.
Al Warsan is one of Dubai’s original freehold addresses. When Regulation No. 3 of 2006 set out the areas where buyers of any nationality could own property, Warsan 1 was on the list alongside Palm Jumeirah, Dubai Marina and Emirates Hills — and it has been building on that head start ever since. In Dubai Land Department records the name covers four separate communities: Al Warsan First, Second, Third and Fourth, sold by the portals as Al Warsan 1 to 4. Al Warsan 1 holds Nakheel’s International City masterplan and the gated townhouses of Warsan Village. Al Warsan 4, marketed as International City Phase 2, is where the district’s new apartment construction is concentrated and where most of today’s buying happens. Al Warsan 2 and 3 are the district’s civic and utility side, home to Dubai Municipality facilities including the Birds and Pets Market and some of the emirate’s flagship sustainable infrastructure. Al Warsan 1 alone was home to an estimated 109,468 residents at the end of 2023, which makes it one of the emirate’s largest residential communities and explains the depth of its rental market.
This is Dubai’s highest-volume affordable investment district, and it plays to a clear set of strengths: yield, liquidity and a dated catalyst. It suits yield-first buyers working under AED 1 million, portfolio builders combining two or three units toward the AED 2 million Golden Visa threshold, landlords who want a deep and fast-moving tenant market, and investors with a three-to-five-year hold who are buying the 2029 Metro as much as today’s rent roll. Three dated facts frame any decision made here in 2026: the Blue Line opens on 9 September 2029 with three International City stations and the network’s only new interchange inside this district; managed paid parking arrived in International City on 1 February 2026; and a major junction upgrade at the district’s main entrance completes in Q3 2028. If a different profile fits you better, your Fidu agent can put Al Warsan side by side with the alternatives.
Al Warsan 1 holds the residential mass. International City’s ten country-themed clusters — England, the Emirates, Russia, Italy, Spain, France, Persia, Greece, Morocco and China — carry what Nakheel describes as over 22,000 residences, predominantly studios and one-bedroom apartments. Warsan Village, Nakheel’s gated community of three-bedroom townhouses with maid’s rooms and private gardens, is recorded by DLD under the same Al Warsan First area name, as is the newer Warsan Residential pocket where OLIVZ and Petalz by Danube sit. Al Warsan 4 is apartment country: low- to mid-rise buildings including Al Jawzaa, Equiti, Rawabi/Ritz and Lootah Residence, alongside the off-plan pipeline covered under handover below. Al Warsan 2 and 3 carry the district’s civic, logistics and light-commercial base — Al Warsan 2 is also home to the Desert Palm polo estate, and Al Warsan 3 hosts flydubai’s campus and the Building Materials Mall. One naming note worth carrying into a search: listings label Al Warsan 4 as “International City Phase 2”, so search both names and confirm the community on the title deed rather than the listing.
Al Warsan 1 and Al Warsan 4 are freehold and open to buyers of any nationality. Al Warsan 1 carries the stronger pedigree: it is named in Regulation No. 3 of 2006, the instrument that created Dubai’s original designated freehold areas, in the same schedule as Palm Jumeirah, Dubai Marina and Emirates Hills. International City and Warsan Village both sit inside it. Al Warsan 4 came later and is where most current transactions are recorded, with DLD registering foreign-owned sales there every month, both ready and off-plan. Al Warsan 2 and Al Warsan 3 are the district’s civic and utility side, so residential ownership questions centre on 1 and 4. As with any Dubai freehold purchase, confirm a specific unit’s registration on the title deed or through the Dubai REST app before signing — community naming across this district is inconsistent enough between listings that the check is worth five minutes.
The property-investor Golden Visa requires a Dubai Land Department valuation of at least AED 2,000,000, and the rule explicitly allows that value to be met across a group of properties rather than one. That suits Al Warsan well. Asking prices in Al Warsan 4 in August 2026 ran from around AED 486,000 for a studio to roughly AED 1,350,000 for a two-bedroom, so two or three units assembled in the same district reach the threshold comfortably, with rental income supporting the holding cost while they do. Warsan Village can clear it on a single title: three-bedroom townhouses were listed from around AED 1.9 million. Get a DLD valuation on the specific property rather than working from an asking price, since the visa is assessed on the DLD figure. There is also a second route worth knowing: DLD’s Investor Residence, known as Taskeen, grants a two-year residence visa, and for a sole individual owner it carries no minimum property value at all — which opens the door unusually wide in Al Warsan, because most stock here sits below AED 1 million.
International City’s clusters have been built out and occupied since the mid-to-late 2000s, and Warsan Village completed in stages from 2016, with its Souk Warsan retail and apartment blocks following in October 2018. Al Warsan 4 is where everything current is happening. Property Finder listed 38 new and off-plan projects there in August 2026, from developers including Samana, LEOS International, Newbury, Anax and Valores, with handovers running from ready stock through to Q4 2029 and clustering in 2027 and 2028. Launch prices span AED 450,000 to AED 3,200,000, the upper end being Kensington Gardens by LEOS, the district’s only current pipeline product priced above the Golden Visa threshold. Your Fidu agent can pull the DLD project registration, escrow status and payment plan on any launch you are considering.
Al Warsan prices vary by sub-area and by whether stock is ready or off-plan, so this guide gives figures per segment rather than one district number. From DLD-recorded transactions in the eight months to 31 July 2026: Warsan Village three-bedroom townhouses sold between AED 1.95 million and AED 2.05 million, or AED 1,168 to AED 1,237 per square foot. Ready resale apartments in Al Warsan 4 transacted between AED 597 and AED 963 per square foot. A one-bedroom in International City Phase 1 sold on 31 July at AED 460,000 on 721 sq ft, or AED 638 per square foot. The most useful comparison a buyer can make here is between ready and off-plan: on 30 and 31 July 2026, DLD recorded ready apartments in Al Warsan 4 at AED 788 per square foot and off-plan launches in the same area between AED 1,046 and AED 1,871. Ready stock offers immediate rental income at the lower entry point, while off-plan buys into newer buildings on a payment plan ahead of the 2029 Metro — two different strategies, both well represented here. These are bands drawn from individual transaction records rather than a published index.
Rental figures here are drawn from advertised listings over the trailing 12 months. In Al Warsan 4, 446 listings averaged AED 47,600 a year, with studios asking AED 32,000 to AED 55,000, one-bedrooms averaging AED 49,500 and two-bedrooms AED 62,600. Warsan Village’s 35 villa and townhouse listings averaged AED 114,900 a year. Across the district, new lets averaged about AED 52,800 against AED 44,800 for renewals — a gap of roughly 18% that works in a landlord’s favour on turnover. Demand comes from the Dragon Mart retail and wholesale workforce, the logistics employment around Al Warsan 2 and 3, and tenants who want the most floor space per dirham available in a freehold community with a Metro station on the way. The depth is real rather than theoretical: 1,506 new studio rental contracts were registered in International City Phase 2 in the 12 months to late August 2026, so a well-priced unit re-lets quickly.
On DLD transaction data published in June 2026, Al Warsan averages 8.2% gross rental yield, against International City at 8.6%, Dubai Silicon Oasis at 8.7% and Jumeirah Village Circle at 8.0% — placing it firmly in the upper tier of Dubai’s affordable segment. Measured on advertised listings rather than recorded transactions, the same market shows 9.5% for Al Warsan 4 apartments overall and 5.7% across Warsan Village’s villas and townhouses. The two methods differ by a little over a point because advertised sale prices run ahead of recorded ones while advertised rents lag, so compare like with like when weighing this against another area. What holds on every method is the shape: apartments in Al Warsan 4 are among the strongest income plays in Dubai at this ticket size, and income is what this district is bought for.
Service charges vary by building and are published per property on Mollak, RERA’s official service-charge platform, which is the correct place to check before buying. Rather than quote a community-wide estimate, your Fidu agent will pull the exact Mollak-approved figure for any specific unit you are considering, alongside the building’s maintenance history, so you can model the net yield precisely.
Al Warsan’s transport story is about to change more than almost any district in Dubai. RTA’s Blue Line — 30 km and 14 stations, opening 9 September 2029 — puts three of those stations in International City, and International City (1) is an underground interchange where the line’s two branches meet, making it the only new interchange on the network outside the existing Red and Green Line connections. The line is being built here rather than merely routed through: the precast factory producing its tunnel rings sits inside International City, excavation exceeding 400,000 cubic metres has begun at all three station sites, and RTA reported the project 12% complete in December 2025 against a 30% target for the end of 2026. Until then the district runs on road and bus, with Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Road (E311) to the west, the Al Awir Road corridor (E44) to the north and Emirates Road (E611) to the south-east. Bus route 65 runs to Al Rashidiya Bus Station beside Centrepoint Metro, with routes 55 and 20 serving the district. On parking, International City moved to managed paid parking on 1 February 2026 under Parkin zone 621Q, charged daily from 08:00 to midnight and free on Sundays and public holidays, at AED 2 for 30 minutes rising to AED 25 for 16 to 24 hours. Each residential unit without dedicated parking is entitled to one free residential permit, and the change has pushed out the commercial fleets that previously took residential bays.
Families in Al Warsan are served by a strong cluster of schools a short drive away in Al Warqa, Academic City and Dubai Silicon Oasis, two of them rated Very Good by KHDA. The options and their KHDA ratings are GEMS Our Own English High School in Al Warqa First (Indian curriculum, Very Good), Lycée Français International Georges Pompidou in Al Rowaiyah First (French, Very Good), Our Own High School Dubai Branch (Indian, Good), The School of Research Science (UK, Good), GEMS Al Khaleej International School (American and IB, Good) and The Indian International School in Dubai Silicon Oasis (Good) — a spread of curricula that covers most family requirements within a single commute. Those ratings come from the 2023–2024 inspection cycle, which remains the most recent for almost every Dubai school: KHDA paused its annual inspections for the 2025–26 academic year and confirmed in June 2026 that quality assurance visits resume from 2026–27. For younger children, Oriental Wise Early Childhood Center is registered with KHDA at International City, a bilingual English–Mandarin nursery reflecting the community’s long-standing Chinese business base.
Day-to-day healthcare is well covered inside the district. HealthHub Clinic International City, operated by Al-Futtaim Health, trades daily from 08:00 to 22:00 with more than twelve specialities, an attached pharmacy, in-house laboratory and on-site imaging. Life Medical Centre sits in Al Warsan 4 at the Chez Moi Building, open 07:00 to 23:00, with paediatrics, family medicine and obstetrics. Nad Al Hamar Health Center, a short drive north, runs 24/7 and has since 2010, with family medicine, obstetrics, paediatrics, dental, laboratory and imaging, and Fakeeh University Hospital in Dubai Silicon Oasis provides the nearest large private emergency department. Everyday retail is a genuine strength: Carrefour anchors Dragon Mart 2, a Lulu occupies a block of Souk Warsan, and International City’s cluster ground floors carry convenience retail in the thousands of units, which is why residents rarely need to leave the district for daily shopping.
Dragon Mart is the reason most of Dubai knows this district. Sitting in Al Warsan 1 on the Al Awir Road corridor, it is the largest Chinese trading hub outside mainland China, with more than 6,000 shops and kiosks, 8,200 parking spaces and over 40 million visitors a year, trading 10:00 to 22:00 Sunday to Thursday and 10:00 to 23:00 on Friday and Saturday. Dragon Mart 2, completed in late 2015 and inaugurated in February 2016, added roughly 1.1 million sq ft of leasable space with around 570 shops, a Carrefour hypermarket and a 12-screen Novo Cinemas multiplex. Souk Warsan, the eight-block retail and residential development attached to Warsan Village, opened in October 2018 with two storeys of shops and restaurants beneath the apartments. Two hotels serve the area: Premier Inn Dubai Dragon Mart, which opened in December 2019 with 304 rooms, and ibis Styles Dragon Mart. Between them these give the district a retail and hospitality base that most communities at this price point simply do not have.
Beyond Dragon Mart, the district has a genuinely distinctive set of landmarks. Dubai Municipality’s Birds and Pets Market in Al Warsan 3 covers 20,903 square metres across four trading complexes, with a pets hotel, veterinary building and auction hall, and in July 2026 the Municipality opened an integrated pet shelter there alongside a digital adoption platform, complete with a veterinary surgical theatre, grooming unit and rehabilitation area — the newest amenity in the district and the only facility of its kind in Dubai. Desert Palm in Al Warsan 2 is the surprise: a polo club and equestrian centre with the five-star Meliá Desert Palm hotel attached, open to visitors through hotel stays, dining, the spa and riding lessons. And directly opposite Dragon Mart, just across Al Awir Road in Al Warqa 5, is Dubai Safari Park, home to more than 3,000 animals across six themed zones and open through the cooler months from October.
Warsan Village has the best of the district’s green space, a park with a 1.7 km jogging track, and International City’s clusters carry communal green spaces, basketball courts and children’s play areas between the buildings. Al Warsan 3 Park is a Dubai Municipality park that hosts community events, including the Municipality’s Souk Al-Freej market in December 2024. Al Warsan Lake, the wetland at the district’s edge that Nakheel’s own community description refers to, gives a number of buildings an open water outlook that is rare at this price point. For a full day outdoors, Ras Al Khor Wildlife Sanctuary and its flamingo hides are a short drive west at the head of Dubai Creek, and Dubai Safari Park sits directly across Al Awir Road.
Al Warsan is one of the places Dubai has chosen to put its flagship sustainable infrastructure, and the scale of that investment is worth understanding, because it is reshaping the district. The Warsan Waste-to-Energy Centre, built on the site of the former Warsan landfill, is described by Dubai Municipality as “the world’s largest and most efficient facility of its kind” — an AED 4 billion project processing 1.9 million tonnes of waste a year and generating 220 megawatts of renewable electricity, enough to power 135,000 homes. By February 2026 it had processed more than 4.5 million tonnes with 62% diverted from landfill, and the Dubai Supreme Council of Energy confirmed a Phase 2 expansion. Alongside it, Dubai Municipality’s biogas-to-energy facility at the Warsan wastewater plant, launched in May 2023, generates 44,250 MWh a year, covers half the plant’s own energy needs, cuts carbon emissions by 31,000 tonnes annually and is projected to save around AED 320 million in operating costs over 25 years. The wider network is being rebuilt too: the Dubai Strategic Sewerage Tunnels programme is an AED 80 billion investment creating a gravity-driven network of 75 km of deep tunnels and 242 km of link sewers, with a package covering the Warsan area. On the roads, RTA’s junction upgrade at Sheikh Zayed bin Hamdan Al Nahyan Street, Al Awir Road and Al Manama Street takes capacity from 5,200 to 14,400 vehicles an hour by Q3 2028, and recent completions on Al Warqa’a 1 Street and Al Rowaiyah Street have already improved the approaches. As always, view a specific building at different times of day before you commit — your Fidu agent can arrange evening and weekend viewings.
Al Warsan is the most liquid and best-connected of this group, and the natural step up from International City for a buyer who wants newer stock at a similar budget. On DLD transaction data published in June 2026, Al Warsan studios traded around AED 494,000 against International City’s AED 343,000, and one-bedrooms around AED 742,000 against AED 483,000. That premium buys build age: International City’s clusters are 2006–2007 stock, while Al Warsan 4 is largely 2018 onward with a pipeline handing over through 2028. Both sit in the upper tier for yield, at 8.2% and 8.6%. On volume, Al Warsan recorded 2,101 sale transactions in the trailing 12 months to late August 2026, up 30.1% year on year — the strongest transaction growth of the three, and a useful signal for anyone thinking about resale liquidity. Liwan is the quieter, more suburban option, at around AED 1,200 per square foot on advertised prices against Al Warsan 4’s AED 1,165, with a small villa component and a calmer feel; Al Warsan answers with scale, a deep rental market and three Metro stations arriving inside the district. Your Fidu agent can model all three side by side on the specific budget you have in mind.
Al Warsan sits off Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Road with access via the Al Awir Road corridor and Emirates Road. On the operators’ own published estimates, Dragon Mart is about 20 minutes from Dubai International Airport and roughly 40 minutes from Jebel Ali Port, while Nakheel gives 18 minutes from Warsan Village to the airport, 19 minutes to the Burj Khalifa/Dubai Mall Metro station and 22 minutes to Downtown Dubai. Road access has improved materially over the past decade and continues to: RTA delivered the Al Awir Road and International City entrances project in phases from July 2018, widening Al Manama Street from three to six lanes and lifting its capacity from 3,000 to 7,500 vehicles an hour, and the junction contract awarded in December 2025 will take the Sheikh Zayed bin Hamdan Al Nahyan Street interchange from 5,200 to 14,400 vehicles an hour by Q3 2028. From 9 September 2029, three Blue Line stations put the district on the rail network for the first time.
The income case is unusually concrete: 8.2% average gross yield on DLD transaction data, a resident base of 109,468 in Al Warsan 1 alone underwriting rental demand, 1,506 studio rental contracts registered in a single year in Al Warsan 4, and transaction volume up 30.1% year on year. Dubai has few alternatives at this ticket size delivering that combination. The capital-growth case rests on a dated, funded catalyst: three Blue Line stations and the network’s only new interchange opening inside the district on 9 September 2029, already 12% built as of December 2025, with the tunnel-ring factory on site. Buyers here generally choose between two clear strategies. Ready stock in Al Warsan 4 resells around AED 800 per square foot and starts earning rent immediately; off-plan launches sit higher per foot but buy newer buildings on a payment plan that runs into the Metro’s opening window. Both are well supported by the numbers, and the right answer depends on whether you want income now or exposure to 2029. Speak to your Fidu agent for current DLD-verified pricing on a specific building.
Prices in this guide are given per sub-area and per property type rather than as a single district average, because Al Warsan spans four DLD communities with different stock and a wide price range. Sale prices come from individual DLD-recorded transactions and are labelled as such; rental figures and asking prices come from portal listings over a trailing 12 months and are labelled as advertised figures. The two are never mixed. Figures that are disclosed per property rather than published as an index — service charges in particular — are confirmed on the specific unit by your Fidu agent.
Where a figure could not be tied to one of these named, dated sources, it is described qualitatively rather than estimated.
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