Marsa Al Saadiyat Prices: What Saadiyat’s Registered Sales Say Phase One Will Cost

Start with the honest sentence

Aldar has not priced Marsa Al Saadiyat. Its release of 22 July 2026 gave the scale, AED 100 billion of development across 6.4 million square metres and 8 kilometres of waterfront, and said sales start in the second half of 2026. No price list, no starting price and no rate per square foot has been published, and Aldar’s project page still describes the district as coming soon. Any figure attached to the name today is a broker’s estimate. Estimates are fine as long as they are labelled and built from something. Ours is built from three things you can check: the ADREC register of every sale on Saadiyat, Yas and Reem in the trailing 12 months, the launch prices Aldar has set on its recent Saadiyat releases, and Knight Frank’s half-year review of the emirate. Together they bracket where a first-phase price list can plausibly land. The method matters more than the number. When Aldar’s list arrives it will be quoted in dirhams per unit; the register speaks in dirhams per square foot by type and bedroom. Convert the list to the register’s language and the launch either sits inside the island’s range or it does not. This guide gives you the range.

What Saadiyat trades at, by type and bedroom

The ADREC register does not tag a sale with a project name, so the island figures below are every registered sale on Al Saadiyat Island by type and bedroom count, off-plan and ready together, over the 12 months to August 2026. Ready is the median where the register can separate completed stock.

Two things stand out. First, the gap between the all-sales median and the ready median is large on apartments, AED 3.82 million against AED 2.5 million, which says the new launches on the island are being sold well above the price of the older completed stock. That is the launch premium, and it is what a Marsa Al Saadiyat buyer will be paying into. Second, villas run the other way: ready villas at AED 15 million against an all-sales median of AED 9.25 million, because the completed beachfront and golf villas are the island’s scarcest asset and the off-plan Lagoons villas are inland. A hillside or marina villa at Marsa Al Saadiyat sits between those two worlds, and Aldar will price it accordingly.

The projects that set the island’s current ceiling

The register does publish project-level rows for the larger schemes, and they show what Aldar and its neighbours have actually achieved on new Saadiyat stock in the last year. These are the comparables a first-phase price list will be measured against.

Read as a ladder, Aldar’s unbranded Saadiyat apartments have cleared between AED 2,400 and AED 3,933 per square foot in the last year depending on position, with the Cultural District waterfront (The Row, Mamsha Gardens) at the top of that band and the inland Grove at the bottom. Its villas have registered at AED 1,490 to 1,610 per square foot. Branded residences on the beach are a different market entirely, at AED 6,500 to 8,700 per square foot. Marsa Al Saadiyat contains all three of those products. A first-phase waterfront apartment from Aldar, sold on a marina it has not yet built, has a natural reference in The Row at AED 3,861 per square foot and Mamsha Gardens at AED 3,485. A hillside villa has its reference in Lagoons at around AED 1,500 to 1,600, with a premium for the water. A branded residence on the marina will be priced against Mamsha Beach, not against either.

The ladder below: Yas and Reem

Saadiyat is the top of the Abu Dhabi ladder, and the two rungs below it show how much of the island’s price is the island. The register puts Yas Island apartments at a median of AED 1.9 million and AED 2,205 per square foot across 4,600 sales, and Al Reem Island at AED 1.7 million and AED 1,629 per square foot across 8,130 sales. Saadiyat’s AED 3,386 is roughly one and a half times Yas and twice Reem on the same measure.

What Knight Frank adds

Knight Frank’s Abu Dhabi Residential and Office Market Review for H1 2026 puts Al Saadiyat Island at about AED 43,100 per square metre, roughly AED 4,000 per square foot on average transaction prices, up about 21% year on year to June 2026, and confirms it as the emirate’s most expensive apartment market. Yas and Reem each grew about 18% on the same measure. The consultancy’s average sits above the register’s median because averages are pulled up by the branded beachfront sales in the table above; the two are consistent. The growth rate is the part to weigh. A district launching into a market that has repriced by a fifth in a year is a district whose developer knows exactly what the neighbours are paying. Aldar’s H1 results recorded AED 12.1 billion of development sales with 80% of UAE sales to overseas and expatriate buyers, and described a measured approach to launches in response to market conditions. That is a developer with pricing power and no need to discount its final Saadiyat phase.

Aldar names the price at launch, and how to read it

None of the above is a Marsa Al Saadiyat price. Aldar sets its prices at launch, releases them to registered buyers first, and on recent Saadiyat releases has opened with starting prices rather than full lists: Mamsha Palm from AED 3.6 million to 3.7 million for its 44 residences, Al Sidr villas from AED 6.1 million, Faya Al Saadiyat mansions from AED 95.9 million. Expect the same shape for Marsa Al Saadiyat: a starting price per product, a payment plan, and a list that firms up unit by unit at the sales event. When it lands, do three things. Divide each unit’s price by its area to get a rate per square foot, and put it against the type and bedroom row in the first table. Compare it with The Row and Mamsha Gardens for apartments and Lagoons for villas, since those are Aldar’s own recent marks. And check the payment plan’s handover balance against what a bank will lend, using the off-plan mortgage guide on this site. A launch price inside the island band with a construction-linked plan is what the data says to expect. A price well above the band is Aldar pricing the marina, the theatre district and the rail station into a first phase that will take years to deliver, and that is a judgement about the future, not about the register. The compare projects tool on this site puts any two Abu Dhabi launches side by side on registered numbers, and will carry Marsa Al Saadiyat from the day its list is public.