Saturday, September 13, 2008

Dubai real estate - the good & the bad

You want the good news or the bad news?

There's both in the story about what was going to be the $3.3 billion Plantation Equestrian & Polo Club.

The bad news is a dispute, payment default, repossession, corruption investigation, executives in custody, worried buyers...

Land for the project has been repossessed by Dubai Islamic Bank over payment default by the developer because it was the collateral for the loan.

But there is good news in the story. RERA, the Real Estate Regulatory Authority, has said that investors' rights are 100% guaranteed and they will be compensated.

That's a sign that the laws and regulations are catching up. Better late than never I suppose, although, like so much else in the way of infrastructure and laws, all of this should have been in place before development was allowed to begin.

Hundreds of billion of dollars in developments were allowed to go ahead in a free-for-all, just about everything was sold off the plan, there were no laws or regulations. It amazes me that there's actually relatively little fraud because the opportunity to take the money and run was wide open.

More luck than judgement, methinks.

Gulf News has the Plantation story here.

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