Open-plan villas by the lagoons
The Acres Villas is the main family tier of The Acres, Meraas's suburban villa community in south-east Dubai. The developer offers standalone houses of three, four and five bedrooms, planned as open-plan homes with living rooms that rise to double height and glazing that runs from floor to ceiling. Each house is given an outdoor room and a rear garden that reads as an extension of the interior rather than a leftover strip behind it. This is a straightforward family proposition: a detached house with a garden, in a planned community with its own school, at a distance from the centre of Dubai that buys the space. Meraas records the release as sold out.
The layout of the community, rather than the specification of any single house, is what a buyer is really choosing. The villa plots are arranged around a central park with a green network running between them, so most houses sit within a short walk of open landscape. Meraas lists wetlands and natural ponds, a wellness garden, dry wadi trails and wetland walks alongside the main park. The Lost Garden is the children's landscape, built from walking trails, treehouses, forest terraces, crafting stations and water features. The Edible Garden pairs a planted herb landscape with open-air dining. Swimmable lagoons with floating decks sit at the centre of it, open through the year and served by their own clubhouse.
Everyday infrastructure is inside the community. The developer lists a primary school and a kindergarten, a mosque, a clubhouse, a lagoon clubhouse, a produce market, a retail promenade with waterfront seating, a juice bar, a community park and a formal arrival garden of palm-lined boulevards leading in. For a household with school-age children, that combination is the argument for buying out here rather than in the city: several daily journeys stop being car journeys. The counterweight is that everything beyond the gates is reached by road. Meraas puts Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Road at about five minutes, Al Khail Road, Al Ain Road and Dubai Hills Estate Mall at roughly 15 minutes each, and Downtown Dubai and Dubai International Airport at around 25 minutes.
The developer publishes no price for The Acres Villas and records the release as sold out, so price on request is the honest answer and resale is the practical route. Construction is under way and Meraas issues progress notes for the community, covering substructure and superstructure work, boundary walls, mechanical, electrical and plumbing installation, roof waterproofing and early finishing on completed structures; progress is separately reported to the Real Estate Regulatory Agency, and both figures are worth reading before committing to an off-plan resale. An enquiry comes to Wincasa Properties; where a developer unit is involved the sale and purchase agreement is with Meraas Development LLC and instalments are paid into the project escrow account under Dubai Land Department rules, never to the broker.