Sabi Star

Sorry - realized immediately after posting above message that Global Village and Int. City were completely different locations!

oktoberon

I play golf at the ranches every week and nothing wafts over the course... except for a few choice words when I duff a shot.... and... yes there are quite a few....

diablo

They do have sprinklers (frangible bulbs), in every room. Annoying thing though is that the alarm system inside the apartment is connected to the general alarm of the building so when the thing in the building goes on - it rings in your bedroom too. I mean it is loud enough from the corridor - inside the apartment . Lucky thing they are not testing it every day.

Crash

Thanks D. I read that these were all releasing this year, is that still the case from your perspective as an owner? (Since it seems you can't trust the press releases) How is the beach? Have you run into any "hidden" expenses/charges? I will be visiting in December and plan to look at some units in JBR.

IndieG

Crash - here are some gripes from a JBR resident (lifted from another forum)

Quote

There has been no window cleaning since I moved in on the 20th of May. Only today did they come and remove the paint from the outside of the glass after dozens of miserable phone calls. They did clean 1 window, however the work is very poor and you can see from the attached pictures that it is entirely unacceptable.
# The cleaning and waste removal services are poor. I have to manage Idama to come and clean or remove waste and even then the quality of their work is bad. Please see the pictures that I have attached which have been taken over the last few days. the floors are stained, I have seen cats feeding on the trash and smell is bad. I have the pleasure of looking at this everyday.
# The Rimal 1 pool has been closed since we moved in. We are sharing 1 pool with 3 other buildings
# The Garbage system has been out of order for the last 2 weeks with no indication of resumption. Garbage has piled up until you can no longer open the door of the garbage room. I had to go to the podium level and shout at all the Idama staff to get it collected.
# There is no beach garden, and no date for its availability
# There is no Gym, and no date for its availability
# There are no beach clubs, and no date for their availability
# There is no access to the beach unless you walk through traffic.
# There is no landscaping on our podium, and no date for its availability
# The service lobbies on the ground and basement levels smell of urine and my visitors have commented on this fact.
# Due to the poor sanitary conditions during construction, my apartment already has rats visiting in the suspended ceiling. I am now being told that I have to pay for pest control. Not a chance.
# The Elevators on my side of the building are still not working properly and they have only just been programmed to descend to the basement level.
# No list of common services and their frequency has been provided to us.
# All of this incompetence is truly unacceptable considering the financial and other hardships we had to suffer due to the poor planning and delays in delivering the JBR. To demand a years maintenance in advance, delivering nothing is truly insulting.


If you have the same and want to get together to demand some of our Maintenence money back, please contact me right away.

I'm in the process of setting up a Forum for JBR residents.


Unquote

Crash

Wow Indie! Can you pm me this other forum? My brother in law lives in a very cool and well maintained building in Bur Dubai. He has also told me that we should look at villas as he is not comfortable in general with the new buildings that are now releasing.

Eeyore

What are they moaning about? It's a lifestyle of privileges! It says so on the billboards, so it must be true

On a (slightly) more serious note, none of this should be in any way surprising. When we moved into the Springs in April 2005, none of the facilities (shops, gym etc) were ready, and weren't until well over a year later - obviously ridiculous assurances of May 2005 turned into September 2005 and eventually "some time in 2006". Ah, I'm almost getting nostalgic about having to drive to the Marina to do the shopping!

Even a brief drive through JBR will reveal that there's still an awful lot of work to do. It's probably a good 12-18 months away from completion.

Confucius

Yesterday I was talking to a man,and his conspiracy theory was that the amnesty of illegal labourers was done at this time (2nd time in 4 years,the one before that was in the mid-nineties) so that the lack of cheap blue collar labour would lead to the delay many many projects hence the country would again face another false "demand" scenario...

IndieG

Apparently Emaar is holding a "Ramadan Sale" of the Lakes villas, and all residents have been receiving flyers

Unique and flexible commercial offer
- finances available, exclusive to the Lakes and new to the market
-6.4% profit rate, 7000 AED processing fee, easy approval process
-tenants are kindly requested to RSVP, sales on first come first
served basis
-attractive packages available
-invitations are limited so please register by Sept 30th"

lionheart

What also really pisses me off is the incredible advertising that goes on. There is a radio ad where several families describe their wonderful life style on a community development...walking the dog by the canal etc...when in fact the bloody project is still not yet off the drawing board. They make it sound as if the place is already complete. That City of Arabia crap on Channel 7 TV is equally bad. Green grass everywhere, skytrains running several miles off the Metro route, dinosaurs strolling in the park...give me strength. Some advertising regulations would be nice!

Eeyore

I heard about that... aren't they offering them at prices significantly cheaper than when the Lakes originally went on sale? You'll still end up with an insanely expensive mortgage unless you've got a socking great deposit to put down, though.

It wouldn't surprise me if this is being done because Emaar are having trouble shifting Lakes units. Existing tenants wouldn't (or couldn't) pay the stupid prices originally asked, non-tenants who did buy can't increase the rent enough to cover their mortgage payments, and potential buyers who actually understand the law here don't want to touch them because they know that they can't evict the tenants or jack their rent up.

IndieG

They have delayed projects so much (especially Damac, Dubai Lagoons, Jumeirah Village - just to name a few), that I really doubt that these projects will ever get finished - construction costs have skyrocketed in the past 3 years, so developers would have to take a huge hit on their profits if they have to now build at their original selling prices.

What I suspect is now happening in Damac, Dubai Lagoons is a pyramid scheme - roping in new naive investors and trying to refund some money to the original investors who want to now pull out...

IndieG

Exactly!

No idea what price - whatever it is - unlikely there would again be any takers!

Eeyore

The adverts in the papers for developments which still haven't yet started construction do seem to have more than a whiff of desperation about them. And that one on the radio that lionheart's talking about is just bloody awful - so it's among the "top 10 projects in Jumeirah Village", is it? Who decided that top 10, then? What criteria did they use? Exactly which position in the top 10 is it?

EDIT - actually, I think I'm mixing two different adverts up. The "walk along the camel path with my child" one is Al Fujan, the "among the top 10 projects" one is something from some German company (not Schön, I believe they're actually Pakistani).

IndieG

Went to the Ranches (in Saheel 1) today, as my 4yo had her first social engagement. Anyway we were a bit early so had a look-see around the 'For Sale" villas. Went to Villa 52 (type 3). Called the number, they said the house is empty but we were welcome to look inside as the rear entrance was open.

This was a 5 bed (plus maids - which was more like a broom closet)- I'd never expect my maid to live in a 6x8 rabbit hole.

It had a very small living cum dining area, and a huge ugly beam bang in the centre dividing the room. The villa had lots of windows (shudder to imagine the DEWA bills) and little rooms on the ground floor (actually more nooks and corners with doors). There was a rickety wooden staircase leading to the bedrooms (there was a 1" gap where the staircase attaches to the floor at the top and bottom!).

There were 4 tiny bedrooms on the top with huge windows overlooking some dry shrubs, which we later found out from the flyer was supposedly the golf course - lol!!.

I have never seen an uglier house - both exterior and interior, extremely poor finish, poor usage of space (cannot believe the built up area was 4850sft).

I'd think very hard if I were to buy it for AED 1-1.5 million - and to think the present owners (think a real estate agency) purchased this for AED 4,622,888 and now expect AED 5,700,000!!!

I guess this villa was one of terrible ones of the lot because the house I visited was completely different and was nice actually!

They have my mobile number, so let's see how many times they call to follow up.....