No great sheikhs

John Arlidge

The sign says: “Welcome to the Eighth Wonder of the World”. It’s 8am and I am standing on the Gateway Bridge, which links mainland Dubai to Palm Jumeirah, a giant artificial island, in the shape of a palm tree, in the Arabian Gulf.

I am the first journalist to make it to the centrepiece of the emirate’s efforts to build itself – literally – onto the map. At first sight, it’s hardly up there with the pyramids. The Palm, like much of the rest of Dubai, is still a building site. The air is so thick with dust, it’s like breathing muesli, while the swish of the waves running up the beach is drowned out by the heavy drone of pile-drivers.

Almost six years after work began, more than 6,000 of the 8,000 homes planned for the Palm are still being built, along with 32 hotels, a shopping centre and a 60-storey Trump Tower. An army of Asian labourers toil in the 40C heat to finish the Signature villas, which sell for £2m and upward. The neighbours will include David and Victoria Beckham, Becks’s England teammates Michael Owen and Gary Neville, and the former Formula One champion Michael Schumacher – though they didn’t pay anything like that amount.

Yet, when the razzle-dazzle residents and ordinary investors finally get the keys to what is described as “the most envied address in the world”, they may be in for a disappointment. Nakheel, the developer, marketed the Palm – which consists of a trunk, a crown with 17 fronds and a surrounding breakwater crescent island – with a scale model showing stylish apartment blocks and spacious villas on large plots. The reality is a bit different. With their fake turrets and palm-tree-shaped window frames, the caramel-coloured Shoreline apartments, on the trunk, look like cheap-and-not-so-cheerful Vegas mini-hotels. Inside, the £1m duplex penthouses have great views over the Arabian Sea – but only if you peer through the poky windows.

Buyers, most of whom are from overseas, will have to get their own cooker, dishwasher and fridge before they can make so much as a cup of tea. Basic features such as shower curtains are also missing. It doesn’t get much better outside. The sand on the beach, dredged from the ocean floor, is grey and coarse. There is one swimming pool for every four blocks, which house 800 adults, plus children, between them. Expect dawn raids for a poolside lounger during peak season. The promised canal, along the length of the trunk, is nowhere to be seen.

Worst of all, the neighbours can look down on you from their newer, swankier properties. Residents in the £9m Damac Properties Signature Series flats, part of the 82-storey Ocean Heights skyscraper in Dubai Marina, for example, stare straight onto the Palm.

From the Shoreline apartments, I start to drive along the Golden Mile to one of the leafy fronds, but the traffic is backed up. If a handful of construction lorries can bring the place to a standstill, what is going to happen at 7am on a Sunday morning, the first day of the working week in the Middle East, when more than half of the Palm’s estimated 60,000 residents leave to drive to work or take their children to school on the mainland?

One of the residents who will be spending more time on the road than he bargained for is Andy Dukes, 43, who left St Albans to move into the less than romantically named Garden Villa E29. The IT entrepreneur spent £800,000 on the five-bedroom house, and has also bought a £200,000 Shoreline apartment. He insists he is happy with his investment. Prices, it is true, have doubled since the Palm was launched five years ago and, according to local estate agents, show no sign of weakening, especially those for villas.

Dukes concedes that there are problems: his villa is so close to his neighbours that splashes from their pool come over his fence. The houses that stretch from one end of the frond to the other are so tightly packed that “it’s a bit regimented”. The interior, with gold light switches on a brushed steel wall, is a “bit glitterball”.

With few bars, nightclubs or restaurants open, Palm Jumeirah is “culture-free”, and Dukes admits that he feels “a bit guilty” sitting back and enjoying his desert El Dorado while sun-dried labourers, who earn a few dollars a day, work 24/7 around him.

Back at Nakheel’s sales office, the company spokesman, Aaron Richardson, 29, from Leicester, admits the development is late, and that key features such as the canal have been scrapped. He says Nakheel will import white sand to brighten the beaches.

But he denies that the marketing model misled buyers. It was “merely a design concept”. Buyers’ contracts gave the exact size of their villa, and grounds are “way above the worldwide average for beach-front property”. Average? That is hardly the kind of word you would use to describe a £1 billion development.

Yet average it is. Dredging the sea bed to create a 12-square-mile island is an audacious achievement. But by building cookie-cutter apartments and villas, Nakheel may have risked reducing its promised “extraordinary project of epic proportions” to a Middle Eastern Milton Keynes with palm trees.

www.nakheel.com

Next stop the world

Buoyed by its success in selling property on Palm Jumeirah, Nakheel announced two similar – but larger – island projects off the coast of Dubai.

Next up is Palm Jebel Ali. Due to be completed next year, it will be half as big again as Palm Jumeirah, with six marinas, a water theme park and water homes built on stilts between the fronds and the crescent. The largest of the three is Palm Deira, which will span 31 square miles and contain 8,000 two-storey townhouses, as well as marinas, shopping malls, sports facilities and clubs. It is due for completion in 2015.

The Palms are not to be confused with the World, a man-made archipelago of 300 islands in the shape of a map of the world, which is being built 2½ miles off the coast, near Palm Jumeirah. It is expected to be finished next year.

The bubble appears to have already burst. All new developments stopped. Developers laying off staff by the hundreds. 3,000 cars dumped at the airport with keys in the ignition in December alone. Prices down as much as 50% on last year. This next year will be an interesting time for the region

M Evans, Abu Dhabi, UAE

Milton Keynes, with its parks, lakes, canal, cycle-ways, no traffic problems and a climate which allows one to enjoy being outdoors is an infinitely better place to live than Dubai.

Peter Loud, Milton Keynes, UK

Doubt fighting over the pools will be a issue. Most people just use the flats/ villas to get away for a few weeks or months a year.

max, Croydon, Surrey

As a correction to Joe O'Brien - Bahrain was the first country in the Gulf to issue a decree to allow foreign national to have freehold property deeds in 2001.

Jon Stevens, Manama, Bahrain

I worry about build quality as professionals within construction industry quitely talk at dinner parties that the amount of labourers needed means unskilled workers hired-also they say that shortcuts used to deliver towers on time - some of these buildings the engineer continued would be knocked out by high winds , let alone the expected Earthquake in the region.Dubai is 126 Kms from v. active fault line and BUILDINGS NOT BUILT TO STAND EARTHQUAKES OR FIREPROOFED EXCEPT FOR THE TALLEST TOWER IN THE WORLD CURRENTLY BEING BUILT-

One engineer on the palm secretly confirmed that one frond had sunk!! and in case of emergency only one route in and out-

More advertising blitz, than substance and built on the back of poor human rights-

Most Towers and villas allowed to be vacant hence pricing not true reflection of demand and not value.

The authorities need to seriously address these issues if they want to establish quality build and safety

Anu, Abudhabi,

So very true, couldn't agree more to the report. The development only good for buy to sell pupose.

Been onsite thrice. Cluttered houses , no boundary walls (front back). No privacy. Your siblings can easily get on the narrow road along the frond at the front. I hope nobody keeps a dog outside. The only separation is the short wall of approz 4 feet between the villas. I certainly would not like even to imagine how the traffic would be once everybody has moved in.

BUT, I liked the interior of the villas nicely done and finished. It's just a good thing for investing and selling for some period and that's the most of it.

Shoreline, not my fancy but still a bit better than the villas.

Khurram, Dubai,

The opinions here are ridiculously extreme. I have lived in Dubai since the mid-eighties and have seen the relentless growth in all its forms. I have no regrets. European expats are generally treated well, and enjoy a better standard of living than at 'home'. Is it perfect? Of course not. Tell me where is and I'll willingly move. But let's be fair. Dubai was the first Gulf state to allow expats to buy freehold property and it's been an overwhelming success. Many have profited from it and the concept has been the envy of the whole Gulf. I have worked and travelled all around the Gulf and Saudi and there is no comparison whatsoever with Dubai. But there are some expats who fail to succeed and become bitter, cynical types simply jealous of those who have made it work for themselves and their families.
I think the author and some of the correspondents should give Dubai a break. Its achievements to date and vision of for the future is nothing short of awesome.

Joe O'Brien, Dubai, UAE

Very interested to read all the comments above. Of course its each to their own but would love to hear from Stuart Ryder about working in the "Kingdom".

Im looking to work there soon and possibly thinking about moving my family to Bahrain or Qatar. The Qataris have their own project called The Pearl it looks similar to the Palm in Dubai.

David Birch, Lincoln, UK

Given the increased incidence of remarkable weather conditions and climate change, it would be a brave man indeed who buys a house built on sand in the middle of the sea. What a ship with a glorified hoover can do in a year, Nature could undo in days. Perhaps we have become so blase that we really believe nothing can affect us if we have enough money?

Ben, Blackburn, UK

Would tend to agree with the author. Many reasons not to buy in Dubai. Bad quality of life, nightmare traffic etc. Much better elsewhere in the Gulf. Bad standard of building, any 10 year NHBC guarantees? Thought not. What is the projected life of these flats and villas? More than 25 years? Don't think so. Heat, humidity, concrete rot etc will see to that. That's why there aren't too many buildings more than 25 years old around. All demolished and rebuilt. So much for a 99 year lease. What's the resale market like? Everyone in the Gulf prefers to buy new not second-hand. Is it straightforward to resell the place or do you have to go through the property company you bought it from? How much is the annual service charge? Usually a percentage of the purchase price, no relation to actual costs. Would I buy in Dubai? Not a chance.
P.S. I have lived there and elsewhere in the Gulf. Far better developments elsewhere, Muscat, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain etc.

Rod Polisher, Scunthorpe, UK

I agree with the author. I know Dubai and the Palm well. There is little aesthetic charm in most of the assembly line developments being put up. The fact that people have escaped their often less than successful lives in the UK and re-invented themselves as expat capitalists up to a point in Dubai having bought property there does not change the fact that a badly designed cheek by jowl 'mediterranean' villa is ersatz at best, even if the price has doubled or trebled. That does not detract one iota from the grand vision and canvas that is Dubai. There are many things to admire and applaud in Dubai, cookie cutter developments are not one of them.

M Shah, London,

It is reports like this which have allowed us to consistently profit in Dubai- don't mean to be vulgar...

As always the reality is very different to the picture painted here.- so as the masses wallow in caution there are great opportunities.

It is an incredible place and will truly 'wow' as it unfolds into a major destination.

Underestimate it at your own expense.

And lets be honest- we are all going to our death beds in an oil based economy and a global focus on that region.

The intensity of the region's media/business/political coverage will only increase year on year. Trust me.

Camel

james, London,

I totally disagree with the report. This is an innovative project and those who have a place there at the Palm think it is great to live there. Most information given in the report are not accurate. I think the journalist did not leave his bed to prepare this report. In the meantime the picture featured in the repoert illustrates the villas on one of the fronds and not shoreline apartments as you repoerter says.

Houshang , London,

Sorry to hear that Stuart. Been here for 20 years and loving it. Those that moan about Dubai usually return eventually. They've left because they couldn't get a piece of the action, whether due to financial difficulties, not having friends, having difficulty in adopting to their new environment, who knows? Fact of the matter is that more and more people want to come to Dubai, especially Europeans. For the record, no, I'm not Emirati, am European. Do I regret leaving my country's bad weather, big taxes, low salaries? Yeah RIght! OK, yes, the culture is there, but honestly do the Parisians sit and appreciate the Eiffel, or the Italians the Leaning Tower of Pisa? Doubt it very much. They're probably thinking only how to survive on a daily basis. Think those that want the "bubble to burst" should focus on more important things in life. Whatever the ending scenario, thank you to the locals for their hospitality and letting me and other expats enjoy themselves, no matter how long we stayed

Michael, Dubai, UAE

Nobody can 'stare straight onto the Palm' from the swankier DAMAC Ocean Heights; not until 2011 anyway, if then. It's just a big hole in the ground, years behind schedule and a lot of worried investors.

Simon, Guildford, UK

Having worked in Dubai I would strongly recommend that it is avoided like the plague. Slick marketing techniques, of questionable accuracy , by developers and estate agents are more glitzy than those used in home countries. They want their commission and your money. Once you've sweated for a while by your new pool and wasted several hours in pitiless traffic, it won't be long until you regret your new purchase. Dubai expounds the new Thatcherism , that "Greed is good". Don't be deluded, be warned ! Dubai is a faceless, expensive, shallow, congested and suffocating environment to live in. Very poor quality of life. Fine for a weeks holiday to see it once, otherwise spend your hard earned cash on a seaside cottage.

Stuart Piper, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

its really unfair to just wipe the hardwork of thousands of emplyees & multi million investment, its the first project of its kind on the planet, so in case of any delays its expected, & a lot of people are really proud to be part of it either an employees or owners
the labours are working by their choice, & its 40 C , because its the weather factor, if we can control the rains in seattle then we will control the heat dubai during summer,

zayed, dubai, uae