Dubai

Cristiano Ronaldo is no stranger to luxury homes, and from the looks of his most recent real estate investment, the Portuguese soccer star is putting down roots in the United Arab Emirates following his first season with Saudi Arabian professional football club Al Nassr.  

The fleet-footed forward, who inked a roughly $200 million-per-year deal with the Riyadh-based team, just purchased a mansion in Dubai, The Daily Mail reported. The 38-year-old striker’s alleged new, not yet built home is located on Jumeirah Bay Island, an exclusive man-made oasis known to locals as Billionaires Island, and is expected to be completed later this year, in 2024, people familiar with the neighborhood told Bloomberg. Currently, it’s unclear exactly how much Ronaldo paid for the swanky estate. However, word on the street is that he splashed out an estimated “tens of millions of euros” for the palatial property.  

The seahorse-shaped gated community has become a playground for high-net-worth individuals in recent years, overshadowing other wealthy emirate enclaves, including Dubai Hills, Palm Jumeirah, and Emirates Hills, brokers told Bloomberg. Currently, the über-affluent neighborhood features a private yacht club, a beach resort, and several fine-dining restaurants, while developer Wissam Damaa of Palace Luxury Living and former SoftBank executive Akshay Naheta are in the midst of launching a collection of 10 luxury mega-mansions on the island, which are expected to sell for over $545 million collectively. 

Cristiano Ronaldo dropped millions on a new home in Dubai’s gated Jumeirah Bay Island neighborhood.

Warren Little/Getty Images

Aside from Ronaldo, the secluded, sought-after community is already home to some incredibly deep-pocketed residents, including Saudi billionaire Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel and Israeli businessman and real estate mogul Teddy Sagi. Also in the neighborhood is Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of the late former Angolan president José Eduardo dos Santos and once Africa’s richest woman.  

Ronaldo, who topped Forbes’s list of the highest-paid professional athletes in 2023, has racked up quite the real estate portfolio with his impressive earnings. In addition to his new digs in the Middle East, the former Manchester United player and his longtime girlfriend Georgina Rodriguez own a lavish four-story home in Madrid’s prestigious La Finca neighborhood, where his initials are carved into the metal detailing on the entry gate (he’s put it on the rental market recently), and he’s building a $22 million mega-mansion in Portugal, where he plans to live once he retires. The expansive home is slated for completion this year and is expected to become the most expensive private residence in Portugal once finished. 

Authors

Abby Montanez

Abigail Montanez is a staff writer at Robb Report. She has worked in both print and digital publishing for over half a decade, covering everything from real estate, dining, travel and topics…

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