In Dubai, where luxury real estate is in high demand, a mansion evocative of Versailles is on the market for Dh750 million ($204 million), making it the most expensive home there.
Despite having only five bedrooms, the house in Emirates Hills offers 60,000 square feet of interior space: The main bedroom is bigger than most homes at 4,000 square feet. There are spaces for entertainment and dining on the ground floor. A 15-car garage, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, two domes, a 70,000-litre (15,400-gallon) coral reef aquarium, a power substation, and panic rooms are among the additional features. It is situated in a gated neighbourhood on a 70,000-square-foot property with views of a golf course.
The building, nicknamed the “Marble Palace” by the selling agents, was constructed using Italian stone that cost between Dh80 million and Dh100 million. The property is being sold by Luxhabitat Sotheby’s International Realty. Construction took close to 12 years and was finished in 2018. According to the brokerage, 70 trained craftsmen toiled for more than nine months to apply 700,000 sheets of gold leaf. About 400 works of art from the owner’s personal collection, mostly statues and paintings from the 19th and 20th centuries, are now displayed in the house. The owner is willing to negotiate to include these works of art as well as furniture in the sale.
The owner, a local developer of real estate, refuses to give his identity.
“It’s not everybody’s taste or style,” Luxhabitat Sotheby’s broker Kunal Singh says, well aware that buyers will either love it or hate it.
Compared to other global property booms during the pandemic, the Dubai real estate market has been on fire since late 2020. Due to Dubai’s effective handling of the pandemic, the city swiftly resumed business, luring bankers who had previously worked in Singapore or Hong Kong.
The sale of an empty beachfront site for Dh125 million and the acquisition of a penthouse for Dh420 million are two examples of recent blockbuster deals. Even still, the Marble Palace’s price per square foot of Dh12,500 is more than twice what comparable residences in Emirates Hills have brought in. According to Dubai property records, the most expensive home ever sold in the area went for Dh210 million at a price of Dh5,614 per square foot in August 2022.
This mansion’s listing is only rivalled by one in the city: Also being offered at Dh750 million is a penthouse apartment in a project dubbed Bugatti by Binghatti that has not yet been constructed. (In general, move-in ready homes have demanded higher prices than those that are still being built.) In roughly three years, that flat, or “sky mansion,” as the developer refers to it, will go on sale and have a vehicle lift.
Only five to ten prospective buyers are thought to be affluent enough and interested in the Marble Palace’s appearance, according to Singh’s estimation.
Singh claims that the value of the labour and resources used to construct the property helps to somewhat justify its price. The Dubai International Financial Centre business zone is around 25 minutes away by automobile from the location, which is minutes from Palm Jumeirah.
A gated enclave called Emirates Hills was established twenty years ago and is frequently compared to Beverly Hills in Dubai, although without connections to the film industry. In the centre is a golf course. The Marble Palace has one of the largest total lots in the neighbourhood. The developer may sell or rent a nearby property measuring around 6,000 square feet that might be used for a tennis or padel ball court.
His and her bathrooms are included in the main suite. The guest rooms are each roughly 1,000 square feet in size, while the second-largest bedroom suite is 2,500 square feet. There are two bank vaults, 12 staff rooms, and enough for up to 25 people.