Buyers in Ivory Towers fear money is gone

The much-delayed Ivory Tower in Dubai has come yet another step closer to cancellation as development has stopped and consultants are called back to Sokook’s offices in Deira. The tower is nearly two years behind schedule and buyers now fear their investments is long gone and never to be seen again.

Ivory Towers was initially sold as an off-plan project in 2006 and scheduled to be finished by mid-summer 2008. More than 700 customers bought units in the project but construction came to a halt in an early phase when Sokook, the developer, got in a dispute over the land with TECOM Investments, the master developer of IMPZ.

From there, the problems piled up and Nigel Collins, an investor from the UK who bought four apartments in Ivory Tower in 2006, told The National many of the investors had given up the fight.

Sokook’s web site and offices are nearly shut down, but a consultant from Homes Real Estate, who is working on behalf of Sokook, said a “feasibility report” is to be made to summarize which investors have paid their 30 per cent and who have not.

“For people who have paid more than 30 per cent, their money is in safe hands because they won’t pay any more until we start construction again; for those who have paid less but don’t want to pay any more, we will forfeit them. Our construction is on hold because of the people who only paid 10 or 15 per cent.”

The aim of the report is, according to the consultant, to find out how many investors are willing to go on with the project. If half the number of initial buyers are interested in continuing, the consultant said the project would be scaled down to half its size. An option would be to transfer their investments to other projects in Dubai that were either completed or close to completion, but as the consultant pointed out, Ivory Tower is Sokook’s only project in Dubai.

“If there is no trust left in the project, then we can talk with the customer and swap their investment to a developer who is more advanced” he said without commenting on which developers Sokook had been in talks with.

Further Reading

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