Lubana Island is the newest address inside Amazi, the waterfront district of Hawana Salalah on Oman’s monsoon-green southern coast. Named after the Arabic word for frankincense — lubān, the resin that made Dhofar a trading power for over five millennia — the island sits inside a network of lagoons, connected to the wider Hawana Salalah masterplan by a 170-berth marina, a seven-kilometre beach and Oman’s first Aquapark. Developed by Muriya, the same master-developer behind Jebel Sifah and the original Amazi release, Lubana Island offers freehold chalets and standalone villas from OMR 89,914, with full ownership rights open to buyers of any nationality and no requirement for a local sponsor, partner or company structure of any kind.
Lubana Island is built around slow, water-facing living. Homes sit directly on or within a short walk of swimmable lagoons and kayak-friendly waterways that thread through the island, with private gardens and terraces designed to blur the line between indoor and outdoor space. The architecture draws on the same frankincense-harvest philosophy that gives the project its name: unhurried, shaped by nature, built to last. Four residence types are offered across the island — 1-bedroom chalets, 2-bedroom chalets, 2-bedroom standalone villas with a study, and 3-bedroom standalone villas, each finished to the same resort-grade specification used across Muriya’s wider Hawana Salalah portfolio, from kitchen fit-out to bathroom fixtures and external landscaping.
The island is a phase within the broader Amazi release, which itself sits inside Hawana Salalah — one of only a handful of government-designated Integrated Tourism Complexes (ITCs) in Dhofar Governorate. That ITC status is what allows Lubana Island to be sold on full freehold title to non-Omani buyers, with no local sponsor or joint-venture structure required.
Lubana Island sits inside Amazi, within the Hawana Salalah masterplan on the coast of Dhofar Governorate, roughly 20 minutes east of Salalah city centre and around 20 minutes from Salalah International Airport. The setting is Oman’s only khareef (monsoon) climate zone — from June to September the surrounding hills turn green under seasonal drizzle and fog, a phenomenon found nowhere else on the Arabian Peninsula and one that draws hundreds of thousands of Gulf visitors to Salalah every summer, when most of the region is at its hottest.
Within the masterplan, residents of Lubana Island have direct or short-drive access to the Hawana Salalah marina (170 berths, the only yacht haven in southern Oman), a seven-kilometre stretch of white sand beach on the Arabian Sea, and the 65,600 sqm Hawana Aquapark. Four branded hotels operate within the destination — Salalah Rotana Resort, Fanar Hotel & Residences, the adults-only Juweira Boutique Hotel, and Souly Lodge — giving owners a ready-made hospitality ecosystem for guests, rental management and dining without leaving the community.
Lubana Island is priced from OMR 89,914, with four layouts available across the release:
Pricing per square metre starts from around OMR 1,340, positioning Lubana Island at a comparable entry point to other Hawana Salalah releases and meaningfully below equivalent waterfront product in Muscat’s established ITCs such as Al Mouj or The Wave.
The four layouts at Lubana Island are designed to serve different buyer profiles rather than simply scale up in size. The 1-bedroom chalet, without a private garden but with a generous terrace, suits investors prioritising the lowest entry price and the simplest short-let turnover — smaller units are typically easier to furnish, clean and manage between guests, which matters for owners running the property as an active holiday let through most of the year. The 2-bedroom chalet adds a private garden of close to 190 m², a meaningful step up for buyers who want outdoor space without moving to a standalone villa, and tends to suit both small families and joint owners splitting personal use with rental income.
The two standalone villa types — both offered with a study room — sit at the upper end of the release. Their larger plots (roughly 545–560 m²) and gardens (over 400 m² in both cases) make them the most credible full-time or seasonal family homes on the island, and the study room option adds flexibility for buyers who plan to work remotely during extended stays in Salalah. Because standalone villas share less party wall with neighbouring units than the chalets, they also tend to hold a resale premium in most Muriya developments once a project matures past its initial off-plan phase.
The purchase process for foreign buyers at Lubana Island follows the same structure used across Oman’s freehold ITCs. First, a reservation agreement is signed and the initial down payment (10% of the unit price) is paid to secure the specific unit and confirm pricing. Next, the developer issues the full Sale and Purchase Agreement (SPA), which sets out the payment schedule, handover date and specification in detail — buyers should review this alongside independent legal advice before signing, particularly around the resale and cancellation clauses. Once the SPA is signed, the quarterly instalment schedule begins, running on a fixed 3-month cadence through to handover.
Ahead of handover, buyers are typically invited to a snagging inspection, where any finishing defects are logged and corrected before final acceptance. Title registration with Oman’s Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning follows completion of the payment plan and handover, at which point the buyer holds full freehold title in their own name (or company name, where purchased through a corporate structure). Buyers who intend to apply for an Investor Residency Card or Golden Residency typically begin that application in parallel with, or shortly after, title registration, since proof of ownership is a required document.
Most buyers at Lubana Island purchase using the developer’s own interest-free instalment plan rather than a bank mortgage, since the 10% down payment and 36-month quarterly structure already spreads the cost without any financing charge. For buyers who do want to accelerate completion or free up the instalment cashflow, several banks operating in Oman offer mortgage products to non-resident freehold buyers within designated ITCs, typically requiring a larger initial equity contribution than the developer’s own down payment and subject to the bank’s standard income and credit checks. Because Lubana Island’s own payment plan is interest-free, most buyers find it more cost-effective to remain on the developer schedule unless they have a specific reason to complete early, such as wanting to begin renting the unit out ahead of the standard 36-month timeline via a separate bridge arrangement.
Owners who intend to let their unit — whether year-round or just through the khareef season — generally have two paths. The first is a full furnishing package arranged through Wateera or an approved local contractor, sized to the unit’s bedroom count and finished to a standard consistent with the surrounding Hawana Salalah hotel product, which tends to perform better in short-let listings and command stronger nightly rates. The second is self-furnishing, which gives more control over cost and style but requires the owner (or a local representative) to manage procurement and delivery to Salalah, a logistical step worth planning for well ahead of the intended rental start date. Either way, Wateera’s in-house management can take over listing, guest communication, cleaning turnover and maintenance once furnishing is complete, which is the option most non-resident owners choose.
Lubana Island tends to suit three overlapping buyer profiles. The first is the seasonal lifestyle buyer — often based in the GCC or further afield — who wants a lock-up-and-leave home to use personally during the khareef months and is comfortable letting it sit largely unused, or lightly let, the rest of the year. The second is the yield-focused investor, drawn by the gross returns Muriya’s own data shows for comparable Hawana Salalah chalets under professional management, particularly in the 1- and 2-bedroom chalet tiers where entry price and rental demand are best matched. The third is the longer-horizon residency buyer, using the purchase primarily as a route into Oman’s Investor Residency Card or Golden Residency programme, with rental income and personal use treated as secondary benefits rather than the primary goal.
Buyers who are less likely to find Lubana Island the right fit include those prioritising a primary, year-round residence close to schools, hospitals and a large expat community — Muscat’s ITCs remain the stronger fit for that use case — and those who need same-week liquidity, since Salalah’s resale market, while active, is smaller and slower-moving than Muscat’s.
Lubana Island is sold under Muriya’s standard 3-year, interest-free instalment structure: 10% due on signing, followed by 12 quarterly instalments of 7.5% each spread over 36 months to handover. No interest is charged across the plan, and the structure is identical to the payment terms used across the wider Amazi release — buyers moving between unit types within the same masterplan can expect consistent terms.
Beyond the private lagoon frontage and gardens, owners at Lubana Island have access to the full amenity base of Hawana Salalah: a beach club, wellness centre and clubhouse, watersports facilities, a diving and watersports centre, padel and tennis courts, a kids’ splash zone with a petting zoo and mini-zoo, and more than 32 restaurants, cafés and retail outlets spread across the destination. On-site clinics and pharmacies, plus in-house property and holiday-let management through Wateera, mean owners who buy purely as an investment can hand over day-to-day operations without living locally.
The island itself adds a distinct layer on top of this: kayak-friendly internal waterways, direct lagoon swimming access from many units, and a lower-density layout than the original Amazi release, aimed at buyers who want more separation from the marina’s more active social scene while remaining a short walk or golf-cart ride from it.
Hawana Salalah is a designated Integrated Tourism Complex under Omani law, meaning foreign buyers at Lubana Island receive full freehold title — not leasehold or usufruct — with no requirement for a local partner or company structure. Freehold ownership within an ITC also opens the door to Oman’s residency programmes. A qualifying purchase supports an Investor Residency Card application, and buyers who invest above the relevant thresholds can apply for Oman’s 10-year Golden Residency, which extends to a spouse and dependent children and does not require the holder to reside in Oman full-time to maintain it. For most Lubana Island unit types, a single qualifying purchase (or two units combined) can support both routes, making it one of the more accessible entry points into Oman’s real-estate residency system.
Salalah’s real-estate market runs on a different rhythm from Muscat’s. Rather than the steady, year-round expat-driven demand of the capital, Hawana Salalah’s value is anchored in seasonal tourism: the khareef months bring a surge of GCC visitors that Muscat property simply cannot compete for, and Salalah hotel occupancy and short-let rates spike accordingly between June and September. Muriya’s own investment materials for the destination point to comparable Hawana Salalah chalets delivering gross yields as high as 16% in peak years under professional management — a figure driven almost entirely by that concentrated summer season rather than flat, year-round occupancy.
For buyers, that means Lubana Island suits two distinct strategies: a lock-up-and-leave holiday home used personally during khareef and let out the rest of the year, or a pure buy-to-let play handed to Wateera’s in-house management team. Either way, entry pricing under OMR 90,000 for a freehold, marina-adjacent lagoon home remains well below comparable coastal freehold stock in Muscat or Dubai, while offering the same tax environment — Oman levies no capital gains tax, no annual property tax, and no restriction on repatriating rental income or sale proceeds.
At roughly OMR 1,340 per square metre for the entry-level chalet, Lubana Island sits meaningfully below the OMR 2,000–2,300 per square metre typically seen for branded beachfront product in Muscat’s Shatti Al Qurum or Al Mouj districts, and broadly in line with — or slightly ahead of — other current Muriya releases at Jebel Sifah, where similar family-format villas trade in the OMR 1,000–1,200 per square metre range. The premium over Jebel Sifah reflects Lubana Island’s direct lagoon frontage and the added scarcity of waterfront-specific plots within the Amazi release, while the discount to Muscat reflects Salalah’s smaller resident population and longer flight time from most international departure points.
Compared with Muscat’s Al Mouj or Muscat Bay, Lubana Island offers a materially lower entry price for waterfront freehold property, at the cost of a smaller resident population outside khareef season and a longer flight or drive from Muscat International Airport (Salalah has its own international airport, roughly 20 minutes from the development). Against other Muriya releases at Jebel Sifah — a 45-minute drive south of Muscat — Lubana Island’s climate is its clearest differentiator: Jebel Sifah shares Muscat’s hot, dry summer, while Salalah’s khareef gives Hawana Salalah a genuinely unique seasonal tourism draw within Oman. Buyers prioritising liquidity and a larger resale pool tend to lean toward Muscat ITCs; buyers prioritising a distinct lifestyle asset and stronger seasonal rental spikes tend to lean toward Hawana Salalah.
Off-plan sales in Oman’s designated ITCs operate under a regulated escrow framework: buyer instalments for a project under construction are held in a dedicated project escrow account rather than paid directly and freely to the developer, with drawdowns released against verified construction progress. This structure is designed to protect buyer funds if a project were to face delays or financial difficulty, and it is a standard feature of Muriya’s Hawana Salalah and Jebel Sifah releases. Buyers should confirm the specific escrow bank and release mechanism named in their Sale and Purchase Agreement before signing, and can request construction progress updates from UInvest or the developer’s sales office at any stage of the payment plan.
Muriya is one of Oman’s leading master-developers of Integrated Tourism Complexes, established in 2006 as a joint venture between Orascom Development Holding AG — a Switzerland-listed developer with more than 34 years of integrated-town experience across 10 destinations in 7 countries, including El Gouna and O West in Egypt, The Cove in the UAE, Lustica Bay in Montenegro and Andermatt Swiss Alps — and Oman Tourism Development Company SAOC, the tourism investment arm of OMRAN Group, the Sultanate’s government tourism authority. Muriya’s Oman portfolio includes Jebel Sifah and Hawana Salalah, and the parent Orascom group manages more than 101 million square metres of land globally, giving Lubana Island the backing of a developer with a two-decade delivery record in the region.
Yes. Hawana Salalah is a designated Integrated Tourism Complex, which means Lubana Island is sold on full freehold title to buyers of any nationality, with no requirement for an Omani partner or local company.
10% is due on signing, followed by 12 quarterly instalments of 7.5% each over 36 months to handover, interest-free.
A qualifying purchase supports an Investor Residency Card application, and buyers above the relevant investment threshold can apply for Oman’s 10-year Golden Residency, which extends to a spouse and dependent children.
Salalah’s khareef monsoon season (June–September) drives a seasonal surge in Gulf tourism that Muscat cannot replicate, pushing short-let occupancy and rates sharply higher during those months and supporting some of the highest gross yields recorded across Muriya’s Oman portfolio.
Yes. Wateera, the in-house property and holiday-let management operation for the destination, manages bookings, maintenance and guest services on behalf of owners.
Approximately 20 minutes by car.
Oman levies no capital gains tax and no recurring annual property tax on freehold residential real estate, and places no restriction on repatriating rental income or sale proceeds abroad.
Freehold ITC titles in Oman are generally resaleable once a buyer’s contractual obligations under the sale and purchase agreement are met; specific resale terms and any developer transfer fee should be confirmed at the point of reservation.
Many international buyers complete the reservation and SPA signing remotely through a power of attorney, with UInvest and the developer’s sales team coordinating documentation; however, an in-person visit is recommended before final payment to inspect the site and community in person.
Pricing is quoted in Omani Rials (OMR). The Rial has been pegged to the US Dollar at a fixed rate since 1986, giving buyers currency stability uncommon among emerging real estate markets.
Yes, in most cases qualifying investment thresholds can be met through a single unit or a combination of freehold units within the same ownership structure; buyers close to the threshold should confirm current rules with UInvest and Oman’s Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning before committing.
It can be, particularly for retirees or remote workers drawn to a quieter, lagoon-side lifestyle, but buyers whose priority is proximity to international schools, hospitals and a large year-round expat community will generally find Muscat’s ITCs a closer match.
Payment plan instalments are tied to the schedule set out in the Sale and Purchase Agreement, and funds are held in the project’s regulated escrow account; buyers should review the SPA’s delay and compensation clauses carefully before signing, and can request construction progress updates from UInvest at any stage.
Salalah is Oman’s second city and the capital of Dhofar Governorate, a region that feels culturally and climatically distinct from the rest of the Sultanate. Where Muscat and the north sit within the arid Arabian climate belt, Dhofar catches the tail of the Indian Ocean monsoon each summer, turning its coastal hills a deep green and dropping temperatures well below the 40°C-plus heat gripping the rest of the Gulf at the same time of year. That single climatic quirk is the foundation of Salalah’s entire tourism economy: hundreds of thousands of visitors from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait travel to Dhofar every khareef season specifically to experience weather no other Gulf destination can offer.
Beyond the resort districts, Salalah retains a working port (one of the largest transshipment hubs on the Arabian Sea), a growing frankincense and tourism economy rooted in millennia of trading history, and direct international flight connections that have expanded steadily as Hawana Salalah and neighbouring destinations have grown. For property buyers, this combination of an authentic, historically significant city alongside a purpose-built resort district gives Lubana Island a broader base of demand than a purely synthetic tourism development — visitors come for the khareef, but Salalah’s wider identity keeps the destination relevant outside peak season too.
As with most master-planned freehold communities in Oman, Lubana Island operates under an owners’ association responsible for maintaining shared infrastructure — landscaping, waterway upkeep, marina and beach-club facilities, security and common-area maintenance across the wider Hawana Salalah destination. Owners pay an annual service charge to fund this upkeep, typically calculated on a per-square-metre basis and set out in the Sale and Purchase Agreement; buyers should request the current service charge rate before signing, since it forms a meaningful part of the ongoing cost of ownership alongside any rental management fees charged separately by Wateera.
Lubana Island combines a lower entry price than Muscat’s established freehold districts with a genuinely distinct lifestyle proposition: lagoon-facing homes inside a masterplan built around one of the Gulf’s only monsoon climates. For buyers weighing a seasonal holiday home against a pure investment play, it offers both routes under the same freehold title, backed by a developer with two decades of delivery history in Oman. See our complete guide to Hawana Salalah for more on the wider destination, or read about the best areas to invest in Oman. Contact UInvest for current unit availability, floor plans and a personalised payment schedule for Lubana Island at Amazi, and to arrange a site visit or virtual walkthrough ahead of reservation.
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