We have been suggesting for some time that the luxury real estate market in Dubai was going to collapse and slowly but surely that has come to pass. Dubai is finished. The Times has finally acknowledged that Dubai is all but finished as any sort of investment destination with the indefinite “delay,” of the World Island development meaning the elements are taking over once again.Of course, just a few weeks ago, the times was also selling us on the idea that Britain’s property market has bounced back and a “recovery” is under way.
I am not entirely sure who benefits from property prices that are out of reach of the majority of the population, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the Times might be in a little financial difficulty – maybe. That is sarcasm in case you were wondering. Clearly the newspapers need to get back to the credit boom that allowed them to fill their pages with advertorial about the joys of investing in real estate in the middle of the desert in a climate even the locals struggle to cope with.
The beaches in Dubai were closed several times over the last year as pollution made them actively dangerous. The latest delayed project is the World Islands project.Work has now stopped completely and the World has been described by a staff writer at the Times as the “world’s most expensive shipping hazard.” I suspect that comment would have been enough to have seen the journalist fired last year – but Dubai has stopped paying any bills, and I also suspect that includes their advertising agencies’.
Despite strict Muslim religious laws against bouncing checks or not paying bills – it appears these laws do not apply to the rulers and wealthy. The amount of people being sent to debtor’s prison is rising daily, but the government has yet to pay out on millions of dollars worth of sub contracted work and contractors are being informed they will be lucky to get 50 cents on the dollar – maybe.
Still – the World is probably best described as a shipping hazard. I never quite understood how hard dredging and killing every living thing for miles around could have been billed as “green development,” but that is what most of the proposed developments were billed as. This development was ill-fated from the very start, and the suicide of one of the buyers in February passed by a lot more quietly than when he bought an Island. John O’Dolan killed himself after his property investment company collapsed. He was intending (and had paid a substantial deposit) to buy Ireland and England.
I for one am not going to be too disappointed to see this one fall back into the sea, and we can only hope that some of the other monumental follys – like the Tiger Woods Dubai – where they have imported 30,000 non-native trees to build a golf course – go the same way.
The World has Ended
