Al Mina, Barr Al Jissah, Muscat, Oman — Marina Residences & Beachfront Villas

Al Mina is the newest phase of Barr Al Jissah, the 450,000 m² Integrated Tourism Complex set in a protected natural bay between the Arabian Sea and the Al Hajar Mountains. Six low-rise buildings stand in a continuous line along the water, each turned to face the sea, in sand-coloured concrete with elongated horizontal facades that read as a single composed silhouette against the cliffs behind them.

Two things set it apart from everything else we list in Oman. It has a private 55-berth marina taking vessels up to 40 metres — no other project we cover has one. And it sits inside a resort complex whose three hotels changed hands on 1 January 2026, moving from Shangri-La to Hilton, with the clifftop Al Husn due to reopen as Oman’s first Waldorf Astoria in 2027 — the same year Al Mina hands over. This is also the most expensive project in our Oman portfolio, from $479,200 for a one-bedroom to $4,183,000 for a beachfront villa, and the payment plan deserves careful reading.

Al Mina at a glance

Sizes and prices

Two features of this ladder matter. First, the rate is not linear: the two-bedroom costs $437 per square foot while the larger three-bedroom costs $412 — the middle unit carries the premium. If you are choosing on value per foot, the three-bedroom is better priced than the two.

Second, the step up to the top tiers is a step into a different market. Penthouses at $618 and villas at $660 per square foot are roughly 50–70% above the apartment rate, which is what waterfront position, private pools and enlarged terraces cost. The villa at $4.18 million is the single most expensive home in our Oman portfolio by a wide margin.

The six buildings and what their names mean

The masterplan render in the developer’s own deck labels each of the six low-rise buildings, and the names run along the waterfront from the western breakwater to the eastern headland. They are worth knowing before you ask about availability, because “which building” is the first question that narrows 41 available homes down to a shortlist.

The set is deliberate: every name comes from the sea, and three of them — Sadaf, Luluah and Dana — come from Oman’s pearling history specifically. Dana sits at the eastern end nearest the headland, in the section of the render where the beachfront villas with private pools are drawn.

These names appear on the masterplan render rather than in the written specification, so treat them as the developer’s current naming and confirm them on the price list when you ask for availability.

The marina — the thing nothing else has

Al Mina’s defining asset is its own marina, and the specification is properly commercial rather than decorative.

A 5-metre average depth and a full breakwater are what let the marina take 40-metre vessels rather than day boats — this is superyacht-capable infrastructure, not a jetty. A fuel station and 24-hour mooring assistance are operational details that only appear where a marina is genuinely run as a marina.

One correction to the published material. The amenity list describes a “55-metre marina”. That is a transcription error: the marina has 55 berths, and the 40-metre figure is the maximum vessel length. The descriptive text elsewhere in the same document states this correctly.

Berthing is a separate question from ownership. Nothing in the material says a berth comes with a residence, or what a berth costs to lease or buy. If you own a boat, that is the first thing to establish — ask whether berths are allocated to residences, sold separately, or leased, and at what rate.

The hotels changed brand in January 2026

Al Mina sits inside Barr Al Jissah alongside three hotels, and the sales material describes them only as “managed by Hilton Group”. The detail is more interesting than that, and it is recent.

From its opening in 2006 until 31 December 2025, the resort was run by Shangri-La. On 1 January 2026 management passed to Hilton, and the three properties were reflagged:

The Al Husn line is the one that matters for value. It is scheduled for extensive renovation and will become the Waldorf Astoria brand’s debut in Oman — arriving in 2027, the same year Al Mina completes. You would be taking keys in a resort complex at the moment it gains the country’s first Waldorf Astoria.

That is a genuine, checkable upside, and it is not in the brochure. Details are on Hilton’s own newsroom and in the resort’s Wikipedia entry. Our guide to branded residences in Oman covers how hotel-adjacent stock performs.

One caveat worth stating. Al Mina residences are hotel-adjacent, not hotel-branded. You get privileges and preferential access, not a Hilton or Waldorf Astoria address on your title. That distinction affects both pricing and resale positioning, and it should not be blurred.

Resident privileges across the hotels

Get the privileges written into the contract. The 25% discount and the facility access are commercial arrangements between the developer and a hotel operator that has been in place for eight months. Ask whether they are contractual and permanent, or reviewed periodically — a benefit that survived a change of operator once can change again.

On-site amenities

The 24-hour clinic and pharmacy is the standout and it is unique across everything we cover in Oman. Every other project measures healthcare in driving minutes — fifteen, twenty, thirty. Here it is on site, around the clock. In a bay reached by one road, that is not a luxury item; it is the amenity that makes a remote coastal address workable for older buyers and for families.

What you get inside

A 7.5-metre ceiling is exceptional. Typical apartment ceilings run 2.7 to 3 metres; a double-height duplex usually reaches 5 to 6. At 7.5 metres these are volumes closer to a gallery than a flat, and combined with floor-to-ceiling glazing onto the marina they are the reason the duplexes exist as a distinct product rather than a large apartment.

What the schedule does not specify is a kitchen appliance package. “High-quality plumbing and finishing materials” is stated; appliances are not mentioned. Ask what the kitchen includes — at these prices it should be established, not assumed.

Parking, scaled by home size

Parking is at ground level rather than underground. In Omani summers a shaded or covered bay is worth asking about — the material does not say whether any of the ground parking is covered.

The payment plan: everything before handover

This is the part to read twice. The plan is short — a deposit and five instalments — but it has two features worth understanding before you reserve.

First: nothing is held back to completion. The full price is paid before you take the keys, which means no retained leverage over snagging and no protection if the programme slips late. Set against everything else we cover, this is the weakest position for the buyer:

That does not make it a bad purchase — it makes escrow and the delay-penalty clause the two things you must get right. Ask for payments to be routed through the project escrow account and for a written remedy if Q1 2027 slips. Our guide to buying off-plan property in Oman explains how the escrow protections work.

Second: the flat OMR 10,000 is regressive. Because it is a fixed sum rather than a percentage, it lands far harder on the smallest home than the largest:

The one-bedroom buyer pays 5.4 percentage points more in effective deposit than the villa buyer. Ask what the OMR 10,000 covers — it reads like a registration or administration fee — and whether it is refundable if the sale does not proceed.

What each instalment costs

With handover in Q1 2027 and five instalments to run, the schedule is compressed. Ask for the instalment dates in writing — five payments plus a deposit inside roughly a year is a very different cash-flow shape from five payments across three years.

Service charge — and a rare piece of precision

The service charge is 8 OMR per square metre, explicitly excluding balconies and terraces. Both halves of that are worth noting.

Those figures are calculated on gross size, so the real bills will be lower — the terraces are generous and the penthouse terraces are enlarged, and none of that area is charged. On a home with a large terrace the saving is meaningful.

The precision is the point. Across the Oman schemes we cover, one publishes its service charge in dirhams for an Omani project and another publishes a per-square-metre figure labelled per square foot. Al Mina states the unit correctly and then goes further by naming what is excluded. That is the clearest service charge disclosure in our portfolio, and it is a reasonable proxy for how carefully the rest of the paperwork has been prepared. Our guide to service charges in Omani real estate sets out what these normally cover.

Confirm the period is annual, and ask for the exact chargeable area on your specific home.

Residency: the one-bedroom misses by $41,000

Oman’s property-linked residency routes turn on investment thresholds, and at Al Mina the line falls in an awkward place. At the OMR 200,000 level — roughly $520,000 at the rial’s dollar peg:

This is the closest near-miss in our portfolio, and it is easy to walk into. A buyer spending nearly half a million dollars on a waterfront apartment could reasonably assume residency follows — and at the entry one-bedroom it does not. If residency is part of your reason for buying, the two-bedroom is the entry point, not the one-bedroom. A larger one-bedroom above the base price may cross the line; ask specifically.

Routes differ by duration and investment level and are routinely conflated — read Oman Golden Residency vs the Owner Visa and take advice against the exact unit and price.

The developer: Barr Al Jissah

Barr Al Jissah is an Omani real estate company operating since 2006, specialising in residential and resort property along the Muscat coastline, and supported by The Zubair Corporation, one of Oman’s established business groups.

This is a materially stronger position than a first-time developer. Twenty years of operation, a delivered and functioning 450,000 m² destination with three hotels running inside it, and backing from an established Omani group. The best due diligence available is simply to go and look: Al Husn Villas and the townhomes are built and occupied, so you can inspect this developer’s finished work on the same site before committing to an off-plan purchase.

The Bannenberg & Rowell townhomes are worth noting — that is a superyacht design practice, and commissioning them for residential work signals where this developer positions itself. It is consistent with building a 40-metre-capable marina rather than a boat jetty.

Location and drive times

The top of that table is what you are buying: a viewpoint three minutes on foot, the bay’s main beaches walkable, and a 600-metre private beach at the door. This is a secluded coastal address, and everything beyond the bay is a drive.

The airport time is not published for Al Mina. For orientation, neighbouring projects in the same stretch of coast are given as 35 minutes (Luma Residence) and 40 minutes (Muscat Bay), so that is the right order of magnitude — but we are not going to state a figure the developer has not. If you fly often, time it yourself.

Where Al Mina sits on price

Al Mina occupies the entire top of our Oman range. Its cheapest home costs more per square foot than the most expensive home in any other scheme we list, and the villas are roughly double the previous ceiling. What justifies it is a combination nothing else offers: a working superyacht marina, a 600-metre private beach, three Hilton-operated hotels on site with one becoming a Waldorf Astoria, and a 24-hour clinic — inside one of Oman’s first ITCs.

Who Al Mina suits — and who it doesn’t

Freehold ownership

Homes at Al Mina are sold freehold to buyers of any nationality, with title registered in the purchaser’s name. Barr Al Jissah is one of Oman’s first Integrated Tourism Complexes — the designation under which foreign freehold ownership is permitted — which means the ownership framework here is long established rather than newly granted. Our guide to freehold property in Oman and the ITC framework explains how the zones work and what registration involves.

Rental demand and exit

The letting case here is unusually strong for a resort address, because the demand drivers are already operating rather than promised. Three hotels run inside the complex, the promenade has cafés and retail, the beach and marina exist, and the Waldorf Astoria arrival in 2027 will raise the profile of the whole bay in the same year Al Mina completes.

Marina berths add a second, less obvious demand layer: yacht owners and crew need accommodation near their vessel, and a 55-berth marina taking 40-metre boats generates that demand directly.

The economics differ sharply by tier. One and two-bedroom apartments let faster and at a higher rate per foot; villas at $4.18 million are trophy assets with a much thinner tenant and buyer pool. Current ranges are in our guide to rental yields in Oman.

Confirm the short-let policy before buying. In a complex with three hotels, holiday letting by residents may be restricted or routed through an approved operator — that is a commercial question with a direct effect on yield, and it should be answered in writing.

On exit, 76 homes in a built-out ITC with no adjacent land is genuinely finite supply, and the completed neighbouring phases give real comparable evidence. Against that, at this price point the buyer pool is small and internationally mobile, so resale can be slower than in the mid-market. The realistic pre-handover exit is assignment — confirm the policy, fee and earliest permitted date before signing.

Risks worth weighing

100% payable before handover. No retained leverage for snagging and no cushion if the programme slips. Escrow routing and a written delay remedy are not optional here.

A flat OMR 10,000 on top of the deposit. Regressive, and its purpose and refundability are not stated.

Berth availability is unclear. The marina is the headline asset, yet nothing published says whether a berth accompanies a residence.

Hotel privileges depend on an eight-month-old operator relationship. The 25% discount and facility access should be contractual, not goodwill.

No published airport time. Unusual for a data sheet; comparable addresses are 35–40 minutes.

No appliance package specified. Finishes and plumbing are described in detail; the kitchen is not.

Ground-level parking. Not stated whether any of it is covered.

Thin market at the top. A $4.18 million villa in Muscat has few comparable transactions, which makes both valuation and resale harder to predict.

Why Muscat, and why this price level

The case for Oman rests on freehold ownership inside designated zones, no annual property tax and no income tax on rental income, and safety indicators that place the country among the calmest in the world on international crime indices. The rial’s decades-old dollar peg removes currency risk for dollar-based buyers. Government context is published by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning, with national policy set by Oman Vision 2040 and Invest Oman.

Al Mina is not an entry into that market — it is the top of it. For the entry level see the best areas to buy property in Muscat. What you are paying for here is scarcity of a specific kind: there are very few private marinas on the Omani coast, and almost none attached to freehold residences a foreigner can own. On timing, see whether now is a good time to buy, and transaction costs are in our guide to property tax in Oman.

Paying from abroad

Prices are quoted in US dollars and settled in Omani rials, and the rial has been pegged to the dollar for decades, so a dollar-based buyer carries effectively no currency risk. Buyers paying in another currency do — and note that the OMR 10,000 element is denominated in rials rather than dollars, so it is fixed in local terms regardless of your base currency.

Payments should route to the project’s escrow account rather than a general company account — doubly important on a plan where the entire price is paid before handover. Verify the account independently before the first transfer and keep SWIFT confirmations for the registration file. Rates and banking information are published by the Central Bank of Oman.

How to buy: step by step

• 1. Get the live list of the 41 available homes. By building, floor, orientation and type — with 41 of 76 left you have real choice, and marina-facing position is most of the value.
• 2. Settle the berth question first if you own a boat. Whether a berth is included, allocated, leased or bought separately, and at what price.
• 3. Get the instalment dates in writing. Five payments plus a deposit before a Q1 2027 handover is a compressed schedule.
• 4. Establish what the OMR 10,000 is for and whether it is refundable.
• 5. Inspect the developer’s delivered work. Al Husn Villas and the Bannenberg & Rowell townhomes are built on the same site — walk them.
• 6. Get escrow and delay penalties in the contract. With 100% paid before handover, these are your only protection.
• 7. Confirm the hotel privileges and short-let policy in writing, then register title and, if relevant, apply for residency — from the two-bedroom upward.

Buyer’s due-diligence checklist

• Get the live availability list — 41 of 76 homes, by building, floor and orientation.
• Ask whether a marina berth accompanies any residence, and the cost to lease or buy one.
• Get the five instalment dates in writing, against the Q1 2027 handover.
• Ask what the flat OMR 10,000 covers and whether it is refundable.
• Verify the escrow account and confirm every payment routes to it.
• Negotiate a written delay remedy — nothing is held back to completion.
• Confirm the service charge period, and the exact chargeable area excluding terraces.
• Get the 25% hotel discount and facility access written into the contract.
• Confirm what the kitchen includes — appliances are not in the specification.
• Ask whether any ground parking is covered or shaded.
• Confirm private beach and promenade access rights run with the title.
• Ask for the airport drive time in writing; it is absent from the data sheet.
• Clarify the short-let policy and whether an approved operator is mandatory.
• If residency matters, confirm in writing that your specific unit clears OMR 200,000.

Frequently asked questions

Where is Al Mina?
In Barr Al Jissah, a protected natural bay on the Gulf of Oman coast south-east of Muscat, between the sea and the Al Hajar Mountains. Muscat city centre is about 30 minutes away.

Can foreigners buy at Al Mina?
Yes. Homes are sold freehold to buyers of any nationality, with title registered in the purchaser’s name. Barr Al Jissah is one of Oman’s first Integrated Tourism Complexes, the designation that permits foreign freehold ownership.

How much does a home cost?
One-bedroom apartments from $479,200 (1,238 sq ft), two-bedrooms from $776,900 (1,776 sq ft), three-bedrooms from $966,100 (2,347 sq ft), penthouses from $1,868,200 (3,025 sq ft) and beachfront villas from $4,183,000 (6,340 sq ft).

What is the marina like?
55 berths taking vessels up to 40 metres, average depth around 5 metres, with a full breakwater, fuel station, water and electricity at each berth, 24-hour mooring assistance and security. Note that the amenity list’s “55-metre marina” is a transcription error — it is 55 berths.

Does a berth come with the apartment?
The published material does not say. Ask whether berths are allocated to residences, leased or sold separately, and at what cost.

What is the payment plan?
A down payment of 20% plus a flat OMR 10,000 (about $26,000), then five payments of 16% each running until completion. The full price is paid before handover.

Which hotels are in Barr Al Jissah?
Three, all Hilton-operated since 1 January 2026: Hilton Muscat Al Bandar, DoubleTree by Hilton Muscat Al Waha, and the clifftop Al Husn, which is due to reopen as Waldorf Astoria Muscat Al Husn in 2027. Shangri-La managed the resort from 2006 until the end of 2025.

Do residents get hotel benefits?
Yes — a 25% discount on hotel services, access to the hotels’ pools and sports facilities, direct access to a 600-metre private beach, and special rates at the Al Mazaar Entertainment Center. Get these written into the contract.

What is the service charge?
8 OMR per square metre, explicitly excluding balconies and terraces — roughly 920 OMR (about $2,393) a year on a 1,238 sq ft one-bedroom, and less in practice since terrace area is not charged.

When does Al Mina complete?
Q1 2027.

How many homes are there?
76 across six low-rise buildings, of which about 41 remain available.

Is there healthcare on site?
Yes — a 24-hour clinic and pharmacy within the complex, which no other project we cover in Oman offers.

Does buying here qualify for Omani residency?
The two-bedroom at $776,900 and everything above it clears the OMR 200,000 (about $520,000) mark. The entry one-bedroom at $479,200 falls roughly $41,000 short. See our guide to Golden Residency and the Owner Visa.

Who is the developer?
Barr Al Jissah, an Omani company operating since 2006 and backed by The Zubair Corporation. It built the 450,000 m² Barr Al Jissah destination, including Al Husn Villas and the Bannenberg & Rowell Limited Edition Townhomes.

Talk to UInvest about Al Mina

With 41 of 76 homes still available, Al Mina offers the widest choice of anything we currently list in Oman — and in a marina-facing scheme, position is most of the value. UInvest works directly with Muscat developers, which means current pricing across all five tiers, real availability by building and floor, and straight answers on the questions the brochure leaves open: whether a berth comes with your home, what the OMR 10,000 covers, the instalment dates against a Q1 2027 handover, and how the hotel privileges are documented.

Browse apartments for sale in Oman, penthouses for sale in Oman and villas for sale in Oman, explore all Oman property with UInvest, or contact us for the current Al Mina price list, floor plans and payment schedule.