They are probably more about looks and appearing to care about being green than being practical.

A friend has a villa there next to golf course, it is way overdue. They had a meeting with the property company recently, no DEWA hooked up yet (and to do so will be at owners expense), and the roads will likely never be finished off properly.
When the Race to Dubai was on, they tarted up the parts of the villas visible to the crowds/cameras.
He has pretty much written off his place, and of course there is almost zero chance of him having any success in the courts.

It has recently been announced that over 500 villas are being built for Emirates Airline pilots at Maydan with money loaned from an Indian bank I believe. Better late than never.

Tell me about it. The traffic problems on JBR wouldn't be half as bad if they still had a lane for through traffic. Half the time you get stuck at the lights for two-three cycles is because of all the idiots who get stuck in the box junction, or piss about in the right hand lane trying to get on to The Walk.

That said, the tram does look like it's getting somewhere finally. They're doing a lot of ground work and station prep down on Al Sufouh road from the Pearl Roundabout past the back of Media City and down to the tallest tower block part of the Marina.

Mind you, about the gym stuff...I think we all know the real reason they never went ahead...Salwan realised that they could still 'provide' gyms to the residents – albeit, they would be ones you'd have to pay for, and they'd pay Salwan rent. ****ing massive con.

Still, I bet Dubai Properties Group shit one when the municipality told everyone that the beach park was still around the corner after the drownings the other week. Bet DPG thought they'd managed to sweep that one under the carpet (or sand).

yeh my husband had to go to that office and he was always telling my kids that the 2 tigers were walking around the office!

I always wonder about someone called Pae on the EW site who was and did encourage loads and loads of people to buy apartments etc firstly in dubai, at the beginning when people did make some money and then when Abu Dhabi opened up she was "advising" people on properties down here, such as the lovely named Building Materials City etc. She disappeared completely from view now though.

Your memory is flawed. You were named Eeyore as you insisted that nearly everyone in Dubai was in debt and struggling financially when it was not the case. And still isn't.

I was thinking about her too!! I couldn't remember her user name though

featherbed packages ....

I've just gone and looked up the thread, and I didn't say that. I said that it could be very difficult to live here if you weren't lucky enough to work for a company that paid your rent for you, and you chose to interpret that as "nearly everyone is in debt" for some reason

Rent loans were very big business for the banks back then, probably less so now thanks to the rent price collapse and the emergence of 12 cheques in some areas. IndieGirl confirmed that she regularly saw expats earning 70-80k per month coming in to take rent loans, and when someone who works for a bank says this, I tend to believe them...

Perfectly true, though.

Be honest BC, you'd been suckered in a bit by the Dubai myth. In a thread around that time you complained that most of the people you knew seemed to be doing better than you because they had nicer villas and cars and took more and better holidays than you, and then you didn't want to believe it when it was suggested that they could only afford it because they were paying on credit, even when IndieGirl again confirmed how prevalent it was for expats to be funding their fantasy lifestyle via fairly serious debt.

BTW Meow, just so we're on the same page here - "prevalent" does not mean "everybody", OK?

You were also unconvinced that any significant number of expats had to take loans to pay their rent. I guess that was because you mostly mixed with people who worked in the kind of "traditional" expat industries (oil, gas, aviation etc) where feather-bed packages were still largely the norm.

Many of the "New Dubai" industries (media, IT etc) didn't and still don't pay rent, school fees and the rest. Even at the height of the rental insanity, I could only have got a salary advance of a maximum of 60k from my company, split over 4 cheques - not really much use when a 2-bed apartment in Discovery Gardens was going for 160k in one cheque! On the plus side, of course, it was the companies that offered the feather-bed packages that were most likely to swing the axe hardest because their staff cost the most; my company didn't have to make any redundancies and it increased salaries and paid some hefty bonuses in 2009-10, so when you factor in the rental collapse as well we did very nicely out of the meltdown here.

What gender are fairies?

Honestly, who cares what packages other people are on? I couldn't give a toss if my neighbour is up to his nuts in cash or credit.

Eeyore, fair enough some people may have been living their lives on credit, I think it's safe to say that are the ones that have probably left the Country. I still feel the same about others around us doing better than we are but that is down to one thing, my husbands salary is not as high as theirs. We have a good over all package and I am not complaining at all, but it doesn't afford us a month in Thailand or America every year. Infact our annual holiday will be 2 nights at JBH this year due to the fact we are moving villa's and need every penny for that.

I agree with you but it was quite a thing for discussion on here a few years ago. Eeyore has some valid points but his main gripe is that he doesn't get his rent paid.

There are still plenty of people left here living their lives on credit, just like everywhere else in the world. After all, lots of people *didn't* lose their jobs.

Or they're doing it on credit. I'm sure they'd never admit that of course, it's still one of the unwritten rules of being an expat in Dubai that you never admit to having to use credit for anything - everybody is 100% debt-free and pays for everything out of the enormous tax-free savings that everybody has Just like nobody ever lost money on property in Dubai, they only ever made a fortune

I came out here in 2005 knowing that I had to pay my own rent. My "main gripe" was always with the people who had their head in the sand about Dubai for all sorts of reasons, and who would suggest that (for example) "Most people get their rent paid", in blissful ignorance of the reality of the situation.

ahhh featherbed packages...love em.