Commenting on the handover, Mohammed Nimer, CEO of MAG Group Property Development, said: “We have maintained a consistent vision, communicating transparently. We have stood by our strategy through thick and thin which has underscored our commitment to our customers and our confidence in delivering our promise.”

Almost 90% of MAG 218 tower was sold out within months of its 2006 launch, with many investors initially paying an average of AED750,000 – 850,000 for a one-bedroom apartment. Today, despite falling prices over the past two years, the apartments have still appreciated, on average by at least 10%. Indeed competitive rental returns can be achieved due to the realistic original selling price.

Due to MAG Group’s strategic pricing, more than 70% of the owners are end users clearly keeping speculators at bay. The typical profile of residents consists of young professionals in their early thirties and to date MAG Group has not received any cancellations whatsoever.

“So far we have not received any notices’ of cancellation, which in the current climate is quite remarkable. However it does highlight the sustainable demand for quality mid-priced accommodation,” said Nimer.

In terms of service fees, again through MAGme the property management arm of MAG Group, rates are very competitive at less than AED10 per square foot per annum.

“This which compares favourably with other developments in the vicinity,” said Nimer.

Full-floor show-apartments located on the first floor of the MAG 218 Tower were opened in June 2008, so that owners could check out the quality of the interior finish, plus other interior fittings such as lights, built-in kitchen units & white goods, wardrobes and bathroom fixtures.

“Frequent online photo-updates were also posted on to the MAG Group website to further reassure overseas investors,” added Nimer.

The tower, which comprises 333 one-bedroom apartments and 222 two-bedroom apartments and six retail outlets, comes complete with 572 covered car parking spaces and an outdoor Olympic sized swimming pool. The top five floors feature a full glass exterior, which afford spectacular panoramic views of the Marina, Palm Jumeirah and beyond.

A dedicated recreational facilities and community floor houses a state-of-the-art gym, event and dining hall, TV room and an outdoor terrace.

The residential tower is strategically located close to all of the facilities in Dubai Marina and only five minutes’ walk from Dubai’s Internet City and Media City. The tower also forms an integral part of MAG Group’s development strategy to construct competitively priced buildings aimed at the mid-range market and appealing to Dubai’s middle income families.

Imre Solt

The authority has started notifying investors who have defaulted that if they fail to make their outstanding payments within two weeks that 40 per cent of any money they have paid so far will be confiscated, and the properties will be sold at auction.

The confiscated money, along with any profits from the auctions, will be handed over to the developers. The rule applies to projects that are 80 per cent or more complete.

The move, according to Mohammed Sultan Thani, the department’s assistant director general, is intended to spur the completion of unfinished projects.

“The idea is to see what we can do before the property is cancelled,” he said.

During the property boom, many developers depended on the off-plan model, whereby a property is sold before building work starts to provide finance for construction. Many analysts say the model fuels speculative buying and inflates prices.

The National

Nakheel recently received US$9bn (Dh33bn) from the Dubai Government to revive stalled projects and settle debt, and have now announced more options to investors in long-term projects, such as Palm Jebel Ali.

Options

The options outlined by Nakheel are:

• Staying in the project
• Swapping into near-term projects
• Consolidating into other owned properties
• Consolidating into a third-party property
• Receiving credit that will be useable against any property at anytime and redeemable in five years

History

The debate began late 2009 when Nakheel offered buyers of waterfront homes on Palm Jebel Ali alternatives in Jumeirah Heights and Al Furjan. The buyers declined these offers, saying the options were “inadequate and not acceptable”, and said they would hire a law firm to represent them.

Property prices for a villa on Palm Jebel Ali plunged from  $4.35m to $2.45m in just two months when the financial crisis hit the artifical island in second half of 2008. The project was launched in 2003, but came to a halt in 2008 and on April 10 this year investors will meet in London to sketch up a plan how to put pressure on the project.

The National

Media reported angry scenes at the meeting, as executives repeated what Frank Khoie himself said on Thursday from his prison cell. Khoie has told investors they can claim refund within 90 days and that construction then will commence. Investors, on the other hand, were curious to know how they can apply for a refund and how Khoie will be able to pay.

“Is there any substance to him saying he will be in a position to refund investors? If he can afford to refund investors, why hasn’t he settled his debt and got himself out of jail?”

Ashley Merry of the La Hoya Bay Investors Group said to 7Days. She believed many investors would want a refund but they were unsure how this could happen, as Khoie left no information about how the refund or the process will be.

Dubai Courts have now decided the agreement between Oakley and ACI for one of the units is void because the unit was never registered with the Dubai Land Department. ACI was ordered to pay back his Dh569,585 plus a 5 per cent interest rate from the day he started the court proceedings. The other unit was registered with the Land Department and was therefore protected by the law, but Mr. Oakley said he would continue the fight to claim back his remaining Dh695,000.

“It’s like throwing good money after bad, but having two units makes it worthwhile,” he said.

Mr. Oakley’s investment for the other unit remains in an escrow account, and cannot, according to the law, be paid back unless the project is officially cancelled by Dubai’s Real Estate Regulatory (RERA). This law also states that the money must be used to fund construction, but this also means, according to some lawyers, that developers might not have the money to refund investments if court orders are issued.

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.

The total price tag: about $44 million — or roughly 10,000 years’ worth of salary for the average citizen of Azerbaijan. But the preteen who owns a big chunk of some of Dubai’s priciest real estate seems to be anything but average.

His name, according to Dubai Land Department records, is Heydar Aliyev, which just happens to be the same name as that of the son of Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev. The owner’s date of birth, listed in property records, is also the same as that of the president’s son.

Officials in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, declined to comment on how the president’s son — or at least an Azerbaijani schoolboy with the same birth date and the same name as the son’s — came to own mansions on Palm Jumeirah, a luxury real estate development popular with multimillionaire British soccer stars and others with cash to burn. Ilham Aliyev’s annual salary as president is the equivalent of $228,000, far short of what is needed to buy even the smallest Palm property.

Azer Gasimov, the president’s spokesman, declined to discuss the Dubai real estate purchases. “I have no comment on anything. I am stopping this talk. Goodbye,” he said when contacted by telephone and told about the names on the property records. Gasimov did not respond to requests for further comment sent by fax, e-mail and cellphone text message.

Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic blessed with plentiful oil and gas reserves yet blighted by widespread poverty outside its glitzy capital, has long had a reputation for corruption. But the Dubai purchases, which have not been reported before, could provide a rare concrete example of just how much money the country’s governing elite has amassed and of the ways in which at least part of this wealth has been stashed overseas.

The Washington Post

A lavish presentation witnessed by Dubai’s ruler and thousands of onlookers at the base of the tower said the building was 828 meters, or 2717 feet, tall.

Dubai is opening the tower in the midst of a deep financial crisis. Its oil rich neighbor Abu Dhabi has pumped billions of dollars in bailout funds into the emirate as it struggles to pay its debts.

Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan is the ruler of Abu Dhabi and serves as the president of the United Arab Emirates, the federation of seven small emirates, including Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Analysts have questioned what Dubai might need to offer in exchange for the financial support it has received from Abu Dhabi, which controls nearly all of the UAE’s oil wealth. Abu Dhabi provided direct and indirect injections totaling $25 billion last year as Dubai’s debt problems deepened.

Dubai’s hereditary ruler, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, in recent months has increasingly underscored the close relationship between the two emirates. Sheik Mohammed serves as vice president and prime minister of the UAE federation.

Emaar, the developer of the newly opened tower, said it cost about $1.5 billion to build the tapering metal-and-glass spire billed as a “vertical city” of luxury apartments and offices. It boasts four swimming pools, a private library and a hotel designed by Giorgio Armani.

Emaar’s Alabbar said the landmark Burj is 90 percent sold in a mix of residential units, offices and other space, offering a counterpoint to Dubai’s financial woes.

The developer has only said the spire stands more than 2625 feet (800 meters) tall. Alabbar said Dubai’s ruler will announce the height at the inauguration ceremony.

At a reported height of 2,684 feet (818 meters), the Burj Dubai long ago vanquished its nearest rival, the Taipei 101 in Taiwan. But the tower’s record-seeking developers didn’t stop there. The building boasts the most stories and highest occupied floor of any building in the world, and ranks as the world’s tallest structure, beating out a television mast in North Dakota.

“We weren’t sure how high we could go,” said Bill Baker, the building’s structural engineer, who is in Dubai for the inauguration. “It was kind of an exploration … A learning experience”

Baker, of Chicago-based architecture and engineering firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, said early designs for the Burj had it edging out the world’s previous record-holder, the Taipei 101, by about 33 feet (10 meters). The Taiwan tower rises 1,667 feet (508 meters).

Work on Burj Dubai began in 2004 and moved ahead rapidly. At times, new floors were being added almost every three days, reflecting Dubai’s raging push to reshape itself into a cosmopolitan urban giant packed with skyscrapers.

During the busiest construction periods, some 12,000 workers labored at the tower each day, according to Emaar. Low-wage migrant workers from the Indian subcontinent provided much of the muscle for the Burj and many of Dubai’s other building projects.

The tower is more than 50 stories higher than Chicago’s Willis Tower, the tallest building in the U.S. formerly known as the Sears Tower.

At their peak, some apartments in the Burj were selling for more than $1,900 per square foot, though they now can go for less than half that, said Heather Wipperman Amiji, chief executive of Dubai real estate consultancy Investment Boutique.

She said some buyers may struggle to find tenants at going rates once the tower’s expected high service charges are factored in.

“The investment community is quite divided,” she said. “They’re not sure how it’s going to play out.”

The Burj is the centerpiece of a 500-acre development that officials hope will become a new central residential and commercial district in this sprawling and often disconnected city. It is flanked by dozens of smaller but brand-new skyscrapers and the Middle East’s largest shopping mall.

That layout — as the core of a lower-rise skyline — lets the Burj stand out prominently against the horizon. It is visible across dozens of miles of rolling sand dunes outside Dubai. From the air, the spire appears as an almost solitary, slender needle reaching high into the sky. An observation deck on the 124th floor opens to the public Tuesday, with adult tickets starting at 100 dirhams, or just over $27 apiece. The ride to the top took just over a minute during a visit for journalists early Monday morning.

Dubai landmarks like the sail-shaped Burj al-Arab hotel and the manmade Palm Jumeirah island were visible through the haze. The Burj itself cast a sundial-like shadow over low-rise houses and empty sand-covered lots stretching toward the azure Persian Gulf waters. And yes, Dubai is still open for business: there are gift shops at the base and the top.

AP

Dubai will use the rest of the money to pay “trade creditors and contractors as well as meet interest expenses and company working capital through April 30, 2010 — conditioned on the company being successful in negotiating a standstill as previously announced” on Nov. 25, the Dubai government said in an e-mailed statement today.

Dubai World said Dec. 1 it’s seeking to restructure $26 billion of debt, less than half the $59 billion of liabilities it had at the end of 2008. Nakheel, which is building palm tree- shaped islands off the emirate’s coast, posted a first-half loss of 13.4 billion dirhams ($3.65 billion) as revenue fell and it wrote down the value of land and property.

“It comes as a relief for the market, underpinning hopes that the implicit government support for Dubai corporate issuance is intact,” said Jason Watts, head of credit trading at National Australia Bank Ltd. in Sydney. “Whilst we are not out of the woods yet, it is definitely a step in the right direction.”

Bloomberg

Al Barari also houses 34 public gardens to live up to it’s name which is translated into “Wild life”. The Al Barari-company is spending more than Dhs1.4bn on scenery and landscaping, creating botanical parklands and waterfalls.

Inside, the villas will replicate spa-like environments with free-standing baths, walk-in showers and pearl mosaics. Originally, 330 villas were planned by the developer had to scale back to 287 villas, but in phase two, starting in the middle of 2010, Al Barari will build more villas, a hotel and a 14.6km system of waterways on the area.