Arlington Estate is one of the most actively traded secure developments in Harare. This guide replaces agent assumptions with hard data on geographical positioning, security infrastructure, and proximity to commercial nodes. Read the complete breakdown to assess true living costs and capital risk before you commit to a lease or purchase agreement in this suburb.
Arlington is a residential suburb located in the eastern corridor of Harare, approximately 13 kilometres from the city's central business district. It sits southeast of Hatfield, east of Waterfalls, and directly north of Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport. Understanding that geography precisely matters, because the area is commercially categorised under "Harare South" on most property portals, creating a persistent confusion that affects how buyers search for and compare it against neighbouring areas. The suburb is not geographically southern Harare. It occupies the eastern edge of the city, straddling the airport belt where Seke Road and Airport Road (Joshua Nkomo Road) converge.
That classification question is not cosmetic. It affects how buyers benchmark property values, which neighbours they consider, and what they expect of the area's infrastructure and character. Arlington is not Hatfield, it is not Waterfalls, and it shares almost nothing in terms of origin or structure with traditional Harare South suburbs like Southerton or Ardbennie. Resolving this ambiguity is the first useful thing any Arlington guide should do.
Arlington takes its name from a farm originally owned by William Harvey Brown, who served as mayor of Salisbury in the early colonial period. Brown was an American naturalist from Iowa who joined occupational forces in Rhodesia specifically to collect specimens for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. He named his farm after Arlington, Virginia, and that name transferred intact into modern Harare's suburban geography.
The land sat largely undeveloped until the 1990s, when residential development began in earnest. Arlington was formally incorporated into the City of Harare Municipality in 2000. What distinguishes it from older established suburbs is that it never went through the colonial-era low-density residential evolution that shaped areas like Borrowdale or Greendale. It grew quickly, driven by airport proximity and available land, and that speed of growth produced a suburb that is internally fragmented in ways that buyers need to understand before they commit money anywhere near the area.
The single most important thing a buyer needs to understand about Arlington is that it is not one coherent suburb. The name "Arlington" covers at least three distinct zones with different developers, different title structures, different infrastructure states, and significantly different price points. No Arlington guide published so far explains this split in any useful detail. Not understanding it costs buyers money.
Old Arlington refers to the older, more established residential sections that predate the large estate developments. Properties here are typically standalone houses on municipal stands serviced by City of Harare. This section tends to have older housing stock, fewer security controls, and more variation in condition. Stands in Old Arlington have conventional title deeds or council offer letters depending on origin.
Arlington Estate is a large private development managed by Cardinal Corporation, a Zimbabwean property development company. The estate encompasses 322 hectares of land north of the airport. It is subdivided into multiple numbered phases, with residential stands in low-density and cluster configurations. The cluster developments within Arlington Estate carry bird-themed names: Phase 6 contains Heron's Haven, Francolin Manors, Ibis Grove, Eagle's Ridge, Sunbird Villas, Nightingale Manors, and Starling Gardens. Phase 8 contains Weaver Gardens, Kingfisher Valley, Canary Mews, and Pelican Place. Beyond residential, Cardinal Corporation has also developed Phase 3 and Phase 7 as light industrial zones and Phase 1B and Phase 8A as commercial and office space. The estate's appointed conveyancers are Manokore Attorneys, and all title transfer documentation routes through them.
Arlington East is a separate gated development, distinct from Arlington Estate, developed by Leengate. It comprises 802 residential stands ranging from 500 to 1,400 square metres, 24 industrial stands, and 19 commercial stands. The development is located approximately 5 kilometres from the airport and 13 to 15 kilometres from the CBD, depending on the section. Arlington East's infrastructure scope includes storm-water drainage, sewer and water reticulation, access culverts, electricity reticulation, and asphalt-surfaced roads.
Buying in Arlington without knowing which of these three zones you are entering is like buying in Borrowdale without distinguishing between Borrowdale proper, Borrowdale Brooke, and Borrowdale West. The experience, governance, infrastructure quality, and resale dynamics are materially different across them.
Title structure is where Arlington catches more buyers off-guard than any other issue, and it is the subject that other guides largely ignore.
Zimbabwe distinguishes between two fundamentally different forms of property ownership. A title deed (deed of transfer) is a real right registered at the Deeds Registry. It identifies the lawful owner, and a deeds search will confirm that ownership. This is the form of ownership most buyers understand and correctly regard as secure.
A cession is a personal right, not a real right. When a developer holds a permit to subdivide land but has not yet completed the subdivision requirements or obtained a Certificate of Compliance from the relevant local authority, the developer cannot pass registered title to individual buyers. Instead, the developer issues a sale agreement that gives the buyer the right to occupy and eventually receive title once the developer meets the regulatory conditions. That right can be ceded from one person to another, but until the developer obtains the Certificate of Compliance and the subsequent transfer is registered at the Deeds Registry, the buyer with a cession has no registered legal ownership of the land.
In Arlington Estate, this matters practically. The developer (Cardinal Corporation) sells stands with title deeds available upon full payment, but only after meeting four conditions simultaneously: obtaining the Certificate of Compliance for the relevant subdivision permit, receiving the necessary certificates from ZIMRA and other regulatory bodies, full receipt of the purchase price from the buyer, and settlement of all transfer and conveyancing fees. Until all four conditions are satisfied, the buyer holds a sale agreement, not registered title.
When a buyer purchases a stand in Arlington Estate from a third party who holds a cession rather than a deed, an additional layer of complexity and risk enters the transaction. Capital Gains Tax applies to cession transfers under the Finance Act (No. 2) of 2014. Any person who transfers their rights in a stand via cession is deemed to have sold a specified asset, and CGT at 20% of the capital gain applies to that transaction. ZIMRA requires proof of payment of VAT by the original developer and CGT documentation related to all cession agreements entered into on or after 1 January 2014. The developer explicitly does not accept liability for delays or additional costs arising from cession agreements entered into without proper prior verification.
The practical implication for buyers: when you see a listing for an Arlington stand described as having "clean cession paperwork," you are buying a personal right, not a registered property right. That is not inherently fraudulent. Many legitimate stands in Arlington Estate have passed through multiple cession agreements before final title transfer. But it means you must verify the cession chain carefully, confirm the original sale with Cardinal Corporation or Manokore Attorneys directly, and budget for the additional costs and time that cession-to-title conversion requires, including the Endowment Fee (10% of the stand value per square metre, payable to City of Harare), the Public Lighting Fee (5% of the cost of public lighting for the relevant development), stamp duty at the Registrar of Deeds, and conveyancing fees regulated by S.I. 24/2013.
The price range across Arlington is wide because the zone covers three distinct development types. Based on active market listings as of 2025 to 2026, residential houses in the area range from approximately USD 120,000 to USD 380,000. Cluster and townhouse units fall between USD 140,000 and USD 300,000. Vacant residential stands range from USD 53,000 for a 480 square metre stand in Arlington East to USD 160,000 for well-positioned stands within Arlington Estate's more developed phases. Rental prices range from USD 700 to USD 1,700 per month for houses, USD 1,500 to USD 1,800 for townhouses and clusters, and USD 1,800 to USD 2,500 for apartments. Industrial and commercial stands command significantly higher figures, with industrial stand prices between USD 340,000 and USD 905,000.
The factors that push prices up within Arlington are consistent: proximity to the airport (which matters to logistics-related businesses and frequent travellers), access-controlled gating, completed internal infrastructure (tarred roads, municipal sewer connections, electricity), and the quality of the build on a cluster stand versus a vacant lot. The factors that compress prices are distance from Hatfield's commercial spine, the still-developing retail infrastructure within the estate itself, the noise exposure from flight operations, and the cession rather than deed status of many listings.
Phase 1 and 2 of Arlington Estate, being older and more built-up, have stronger resale records. Phases 5 and 6 represent the mid-market cluster segment. Phase 7 and Phase 8 are the most recent phases and contain both the newest residential cluster developments and the light industrial Zone 7 and commercial office Zone 8A. The existence of light industrial activity within Arlington Estate's own boundaries is something many residential buyers do not realise until after purchase, and it is worth inspecting the Phase 7 boundary relative to any residential stand being considered.
Arlington Estate's internal road network is fully tarred with stormwater drainage systems in place. Arlington East similarly has asphalt-surfaced roads. The main access routes into Arlington from the wider city are Seke Road and Airport Road. Both are primary arterial roads that carry significant freight and commuter traffic, particularly the volumes generated by the airport and the surrounding industrial corridor. At peak hours, the Airport Road junction and the Hatfield link road experience meaningful congestion.
On power supply, Arlington operates under the same ZESA load-shedding constraints as every other Harare suburb. The Morton Jaffray Water Works, which supplies most of Harare's municipal water, depends on continuous ZESA power to operate. When load-shedding occurs, municipal water production stops until power is restored. This creates a compounding problem: extended power cuts mean extended water supply interruption, with restoration lagging power restoration by several hours. Buyers who expect to rely solely on municipal water in Arlington will face the same challenges as anywhere else in Harare. The established practice in the area is a borehole plus solar-powered pump plus storage tank combination. Listings for developed properties in Arlington Estate frequently reference boreholes and 5,000-litre water tanks, indicating this is not an optional upgrade but a standard infrastructure requirement for comfortable living.
Internet connectivity in the area is served by the standard operators available across Harare, including fibre options where infrastructure has been laid. As Arlington is a relatively modern suburb with developer-managed phased infrastructure, fibre availability varies by phase within Arlington Estate and may not be uniform across Old Arlington.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport (IATA: HRE) sits immediately south of Arlington. The airport is sited north of the suburb boundary on purpose: its runway alignment was chosen to avoid departures over the Harare city centre, which means planes track over the airport's northern residential boundary on specific approach and departure paths.
The practical consequence for residents is that flight noise is an intermittent but recurring feature of life in sections of Arlington, particularly in Arlington Estate, which the developer's own materials describe as located "just North of Harare International Airport." The noise profile varies depending on where within Arlington a property sits, what type of aircraft is operating, and at what time of day. International wide-body operations are audible. Domestic propeller and turboprop traffic is higher frequency. Residents who have lived in the area adjust to it, but buyers who are sensitive to noise, or who have not physically visited the property during flight hours, should spend time at the site during both morning and afternoon operational windows before committing.
The counterpoint is equally real. Airport proximity is a genuine and demonstrable convenience for residents who travel frequently, households connected to aviation-related employment, and logistics businesses using the industrial zones. Companies like Vital Logistics and Export Trade Group have established operations in Arlington's Phase 7 industrial zone specifically because of the dual arterial access to both Airport Road and Seke Road and the short transit distance to the cargo terminal. For those use cases, the noise is incidental and the access advantage is material.
Cardinal Corporation, Arlington Estate's developer, has also announced Skyport Industrial Park along Harare International Airport Road, positioning it as a logistics, transportation, freight, warehousing, and manufacturing hub. This development will bring additional commercial activity to the corridor, which has positive implications for industrial stand values and employment but also means the commercial density of the Arlington boundary will increase over time.
Arlington does not currently have a fully operational school within its boundaries in the way that established Harare suburbs do. There is a designated school stand in Arlington Estate's land use plan, described as a planned private secondary school intended to serve the surrounding area's children, with "an opportunity to be one of the leading high schools to the south of Harare." Prospective buyers with school-age children should verify the current operational status of any school within the estate directly before treating it as a household logistics guarantee.
The nearest primary school with publicly available ratings is Waterfalls Gardens Junior School in the adjacent Waterfalls suburb. Families with children in Arlington currently organise transport to schools in Hatfield, Waterfalls, and surrounding areas. Arlington East's development specifications include plans for creches and local authority facilities within the community, again at varying stages of completion depending on the phase.
The honest conclusion for families: Arlington is not yet a self-contained educational suburb. You will be reliant on transport to schools in neighbouring suburbs, and you should budget for that both financially and logistically. This is not unusual for a developing suburb at this stage of build-out, but it is a material fact that guides covering the area tend to soften or omit.
Arlington Estate has a designated suburban shopping centre in its commercial plan (Phase 1B), and the Skyport Industrial Park development includes commercial components. However, as with the school, the distinction between planned and fully operational is important. Residents in the current build-out phases drive to Hatfield for groceries, banking, and general retail. Hatfield has a functional commercial spine that covers most daily needs. For major retail, Eastgate Shopping Centre is approximately 20 to 25 minutes by road depending on traffic.
There are no large-format supermarkets within Arlington itself at this stage of development. The Arlington Shopping Centre referenced in some listings descriptions should not be confused with a fully developed commercial centre; the area is still consolidating its retail base as the residential population grows.
Falcon Golf Club, the suburb's primary recreational facility, sits in the Hatfield area adjacent to Arlington. It is a par-72 course measuring 6,263 yards, open to the public, and offers discounted membership rates to Arlington residents. This is the single most reliable social infrastructure point for the community and functions as an informal gathering hub for residents from both Arlington and Hatfield.
The resident population of Arlington is largely made up of middle-income to upper-middle-income families and professionals. Aviation-related employment, logistics, and business ownership are common occupations among owner-occupiers. The suburb also draws a proportion of investors who have purchased stands or cluster units in the estate phases and are either building or holding for capital appreciation.
Arlington does not have the long-established social fabric of Borrowdale or Greendale, where families have lived for generations and community networks are dense. It is a suburb that is still forming its character. The gated cluster developments in Arlington Estate have their own homeowners' associations and residents' committees, which manage common facilities and enforce the estate's architectural guidelines. Cardinal Corporation's design controls for Arlington Estate require adherence to specific architectural standards for any building constructed within the estate, and these are enforced through the estate's approval process.
Arlington East similarly functions as a managed community with governance over common facilities including planned sports and recreational infrastructure.
Property fraud is a documented risk across Zimbabwe's real estate market, and Arlington is not immune. In a case reported in 2023, a suspect was charged in the Harare Magistrates Court over the alleged fraudulent sale of Stand H32 at Arlington Estate for USD 47,000. The complainant paid USD 14,000 as an initial instalment on the basis that the seller claimed authority to sell the stand. When the conveyancer (Manokore and Partners) requested a board resolution signed by at least two directors, the suspect produced an extract signed by himself alone. The required resolution was never delivered, the transaction collapsed, and a police report was filed. The case illustrates a specific fraud pattern: a person claiming standing to sell a stand they do not control, relying on a buyer's willingness to pay before documentation is verified.
This type of fraud exploits the cession structure. Because multiple parties can hold cession agreements on the same stand, and because the seller does not need to produce a registered title deed to initiate a sale, there is more surface area for fraudulent representation than in a fully titled property market. The ZRP recorded property fraud cases valued at over USD 15 million nationally in 2024.
For Arlington specifically, the fraud risk concentrates in three scenarios. The first is a third party claiming to sell a stand they hold under cession, without the authority of the original cession holder. The second is a double-sale situation, where a stand sold under cession to one buyer is sold again to a different buyer before the first transaction completes. The third is misrepresentation of a stand's phase, size, or service completion status, particularly relevant in the outer phases of Arlington Estate where infrastructure is still being laid.
The gap between what buyers know going in and what they discover after payment has cost Arlington area buyers real money. The following checks are not suggestions. They are minimum requirements before any deposit changes hands.
Arlington's trajectory as an investment location is driven by the same structural fact that created it: the airport. As regional air connectivity improves, logistics corridors adjacent to RGM Airport become more valuable. The industrial park expansion, including Cardinal Corporation's Skyport announcement, confirms that developers themselves are betting on the airport corridor's growth. Industrial and commercial stands in Arlington have accordingly commanded prices at the upper end of Harare's suburban industrial market, with Phase 7 and the Arlington Industrial Park establishing a market for logistics and warehousing operators at price points between USD 340,000 and over USD 900,000 per stand.
On the residential side, the capital appreciation case depends heavily on delivery. As the built-up population of Arlington Estate and Arlington East grows and the commercial and school infrastructure planned within those developments moves from designation to operation, residential values should strengthen. The ceiling on that appreciation is partly set by the amenity gap that currently exists: until Arlington can offer day-to-day services that reduce dependence on Hatfield, it will trade at a discount to suburbs with equivalent infrastructure but better local retail and educational options.
The honest investor position for Arlington in 2026 is: buy if you understand what you are buying, verify everything before you pay, have a plan for water and power independence, and do not price in amenities that are planned but not yet delivered.
Arlington is a suburb built around an asset no other Harare residential area can claim: direct adjacency to the country's primary international airport. That single characteristic explains everything about its appeal, its pricing, its growth trajectory, and its limitations. The airport creates convenience, noise, logistics opportunity, and a specific resident type who values access over established amenity.
What makes Arlington genuinely complex is the internal fragmentation between Old Arlington, Arlington Estate, and Arlington East, each with different developers, different governance structures, different title positions, and different infrastructure completion states. Buying anywhere in Arlington without knowing which zone you are in and what the exact ownership structure of your specific stand is will create expensive problems after the fact.
The guide no other source provides is this one: Arlington is a suburb where the paperwork matters more than anywhere else in Harare's residential market, where the airport is both the biggest asset and the biggest nuisance depending on where your stand sits within the estate, and where the gap between what is described in marketing and what currently exists on the ground requires a buyer to conduct physical and documentary verification that most buyers skip. Do not skip it.
Pricing and rental yield data is aggregated from active market listings indexed across major Zimbabwean property portals, reflecting available market stock as of Q1 2026.
Capital Gains Tax liabilities on cession transfers are verified against the Finance Act (No. 2) of 2014 and the Capital Gains Tax Act [Chapter 23:01], administered by the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA): www.zimra.co.zw
Conveyancing fees and transfer costs are calculated based on the Law Society of Zimbabwe (Conveyancing Fees) By-laws published in Statutory Instrument 24 of 2013 and subsequent amendments, administered by the Law Society of Zimbabwe: www.lawsociety.org.zw
Property fraud statistics are drawn from Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) 2024 commercial crime reports as published in Newsday Zimbabwe, November 2025. The documented Arlington Estate Stand H32 fraud case is drawn from public court records reported by Zimbabwe Now from the Harare Magistrates Court, October 2023.
Suburb geographic classification and historical origin of the Arlington name is sourced from the Wikipedia entry for Arlington, Harare: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlington,_Harare, which cites "William Harvey Brown," The Annals of Iowa, Volume 11, Number 2, 1913: doi.org/10.17077/0003-4827.3865 and City of Harare incorporation records maintained by the City of Harare: www.hararecity.co.zw
Arlington Estate phase structure, cluster development names, conveyancing process, title transfer requirements, endowment fee and public lighting fee obligations, and developer identity are sourced directly from Cardinal Corporation's Arlington Estate official website: www.arlington.co.zw, with appointed conveyancers confirmed as Manokore Attorneys: www.manokore.com
Arlington East development specifications, including stand count, industrial stands, and commercial stands, are sourced from Leengate Construction project records: www.leengate.co.zw and the New Developments Zimbabwe development registry.
The distinction between cession as a personal right and a deed of transfer as a real right is grounded in ML Mhishi's "The Law and Practice of Conveyancing in Zimbabwe" as cited in AllAfrica, June 2020 and further elaborated in Hofisi Law practice notes on property ownership under Zimbabwean law: hofisilaw.com
Airport identification, runway coordinates, and passenger throughput data are sourced from the Wikipedia entry for Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gabriel_Mugabe_International_Airport and the Airports Company of Zimbabwe (ACZ): www.acz.co.zw
Falcon Golf Club course specifications (par 72, 6,263 yards) are sourced from the GolfPass course directory: www.golfpass.com/travel-advisor/courses/31816-falcon-golf-club
Climate data for Arlington is sourced from Climate-Data.org using the Köppen-Geiger classification system at an altitude of 1,507 metres above sea level: en.climate-data.org/africa/zimbabwe/harare-province/harare-3530
