100% mortgages of up to Dh30m to be offered to Saadiyat home buyers

Abu Dhabi developer behind cultural zone on Saadiyat Island, including the Louvre and Guggenheim Museums, said loans for villas would be open to expats as well as UAE and GCC nationals.

Home buyers are being offered 100 per cent mortgages to own a slice of luxury living on Abu Dhabi's Saadiyat Island. Ravindranath K / The National
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Abu Dhabi's state tourism development company TDIC has signed a deal with Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank to start offering investors buying luxury homes on Saadiyat Island 100 per cent mortgages of up to Dh30 million (US$8.2m).

The developer behind ambitious plans to develop a cultural zone on Saadiyat Island, including the Louvre and Guggenheim Museums, said in an announcement yesterday that loans would be repayable over a period of 25 years with a profit rate starting at 4.99 per cent.

The offer, it said, was open to expats resident in the UAE as well as UAE and GCC nationals.

According to TDIC'S website, villa prices at the scheme currently start at Dh4.3m and the average home in the scheme costs Dh12.5m.

TDIC handed over the first of the 354 Saadiyat Beach Villas earlier this year.

The developer said that it had sold 80 per cent of the first two phases of the scheme but declined to say how many villas were in those phases. It added that it was currently "studying launching a third phase".

Readily available cheap credit is considered to have been one of the factors blamed for financing the construction frenzy in neighbouring Dubai during the early part of the century before the global financial crisis.

But Ahmed Al Fahim, the executive director of marketing, communications, sales and leasing at TDIC, said the offer would help the Abu Dhabi property market.

"We are pleased to partner with such a credible financial institution as ADIB to launch this attractive and very exclusive home finance opportunity for the homebuyers," he said.

"Our aim is to support Abu Dhabi's growing real estate sector by strategically identifying the market's needs." In January, TDIC unveiled a new timetable to complete several cultural projects by 2017 with the Louvre Abu Dhabi slated to open first in 2015.

Then in February, the master developer reported that it would sell properties including Saadiyat apartments and hotels to stimulate investment and pay off some of its debt.

Last year, the company made a Dh1.2bn loss on sales of Dh2.1bn.

TDIC has $2bn worth of bonds maturing in 2014.

The 100 per cent mortgage deal is the latest in a long line of offers TDIC has made with lenders on its upmarket homes on Saadiyat.

At Cityscape Abu Dhabi, TDIC announced a similar deal with Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank and over the years it has announced mortgage deals for Saadiyat property with banks including Standard Chartered, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, Mashreq and National Bank of Abu Dhabi.

In April, Emirates Islamic Bank announced it was to offer 100 per cent mortgages to Emiratis in an attempt to kick-start the property market. The news followed last year's spate of interest rate price cutting by banks including United Arab Bank, Standard Chartered and HSBC Middle East.