Doors open up for foreigners

Manazel Real Estate's Dunes Village in Dubai has been completed and the keys will be handed to buyers next week.

Manazel Real Estate's Al Reef development is on track to be among the first property projects later this year to deliver homes in Abu Dhabi that can be bought by foreigners. Aldar Properties is also due to complete the first phase of the Al Raha Beach development by the autumn. Manazel, a medium-sized private developer, will also hand over the keys to Dunes Village, a 942-apartment project in Dubai, next week.

However, the decline of the property market has prompted the company to reschedule its most ambitious project, Building Materials City (BMC), extending the construction phase over five years instead of three. BMC features 4,151 apartments, offices and a shopping mall. "Dunes and Al Reef are almost completed and nothing has changed about it," said Zeyad al Bakeri, the senior project manager of Manazel. "As for BMC, the mall and the two prestige towers are under construction with no change in the speed."

The mixed use towers will be completed in three phases over five years instead of the two-and-a half years originally planned, he added. "It will enable us to give the chance to the sales [department] to replan the payment plans." Al Reef, consisting of 2,380 villas and 1,810 apartments near the Abu Dhabi International Airport, is the only mid-income development open to foreign buyers. All the other projects under construction in the capital, including Al Reem Island and Al Raha Beach, have been identified as high-end developments.

The first phase of Al Reef villas will be delivered between the third and fourth quarters of this year. Other phases are scheduled between March and the end of next year, including the 46 five-storey apartment buildings of Al Reef Downtown. "The first 758 villas and townhouses will be completed maximum in the fourth quarter of this year, but we are targeting September," Mr al Bakeri said. "We have started all the buildings of Downtown and completed the skeletons of six."

Dunes Village, featuring a total of 19 five-storey buildings located in Dubai Investment Park on the Emirates Road, will be completed by April 15. "Next week we will call the tenants one by one for them to check their units, give us their snags and tell us the things that need to be rectified. So within four to eight weeks, when the contractor has finished work, we will be able to give them the key," Mr al Bakeri said.

Al Reef's villas and apartments sold out soon after their launch in 2006 at nearly Dh700 (US$190) per square foot. They traded intensely on the secondary market and prices more than doubled by the middle of last year before falling in September. Today, they are near their original launch levels, brokers said. "The two-bedroom villas in Al Reef are selling for Dh1.1 million, down from Dh1.8m at the market's peak. The launch price was Dh800,000," said Susan Cronin, the general manager of Aljar Properties, based in Abu Dhabi. [e-mail]