Hadaba

Hadaba — Umm El Sid on maps and on some road signs — is the raised plateau that runs south from Naama Bay to the tip of the peninsula. The land sits well above the water, so a great many flats here look out over the sea rather than at the building opposite, and the light in the afternoon is the reason people who have lived in Sharm for years tend to end up on this side of town.

What it is like

It is residential first. The main road carries supermarkets, pharmacies, clinics, bakeries and the kind of small restaurants that are open in September as well as in January, and the streets behind it are compounds and low blocks rather than hotels. Evenings are quiet by Sharm standards: the bars and the crowds are down in Naama Bay, ten minutes away by car and a long walk back uphill.

The sea is at the foot of the plateau, not at the end of the street. Some compounds have their own steps or a lift down to a beach; others run a shuttle to a beach they hold in Naama Bay or towards Ras Um Sid. This is the single most important thing to establish about any building here, and it is the thing that most listings describe loosely — "close to the sea" on the plateau can mean a two-minute descent or a ten-minute drive.

Buying here

Stock is mostly resale: compounds built through the 2000s and 2010s, one- and two-bedroom flats, a smaller number of villas and townhouses at the edges. Prices per square metre sit below the beachfront and above the inland districts, and the spread within Hadaba itself is wide — a sea-view flat in a maintained compound with a working pool and a flat two streets back with neither are different products at similar-looking prices.

The reefs at Ras Um Sid are at the southern end of the plateau, which matters more than it sounds: diving is a large part of why people come to Sharm at all, and it is a large part of why they rent in winter.