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19 March 2024

Nakheel warns service fee dodgers - again

Published
By Parag Deulgaonkar

Growing number of service charges dodgers in Discovery Gardens has compelled Nakheel, Dubai-based master developer, to send payment reminders, once again.

This time, however, the master developer of 291 buildings in the community “door delivered” the notices to each apartment rather than putting up the list of defaulters in the building lobbies.

In the notice, Nakheel said: “This is to inform you that a number of unit owners in your building have failed to pay the service charge (2011-2012) resulting in huge arrears.

“In view of the above, you are kindly requested to pay arrears immediately to avoid disruption of utilities and/ or services.”

Besides, the notice states: “If you are a tenant, please pass this reminder to your landlord.”

In March, Nakheel had issued a notice that had warned utility and third party service disruption due to non-collection of accrued service charges.

“Payments made for the building service charges by unit owners who paid on time were paid to the utility service provider. However, due to the accumulation of the unpaid building service charges, payment has not been made to utilities and service of certain billing period(s), which may result in disruption of service as well as services provided by third party suppliers with no fault of Discovery Gardens Co LLC,” the notice had said.

The series of warnings in Discovery Gardens commenced last December, when Nakheel asked owners to pay their outstanding service charges by January 25, 2012, or face legal action.

For prospective tenants, the developer offers the facility to check service charge status of an apartment before leasing. It introduced the concept to safeguard tenants in the Palm Shoreline apartments, who were barred from using gym, beach facilities, etc, as their landlords had not cleared their service charge dues.

Nakheel officials have stressed before that they haven’t stopped any services across any of their master communities despite the number of service charge defaulters ranging between 60 and 70 per cent.

“As a service provider, as a developer, I have a responsibility not only towards the community, but also towards the population of the country. We are making every effort to provide quality service at a cost which we believe is competitive and that is verified and validated by Real Estate Regulatory Agency,” then interim Chief Executive Officer (now CEO) Sanjay Manchanda had said.

Service charges continue to remain a contentious issue in Dubai with default rates being quite significant. A number of developers have used the “name and shame” policy to force owners to clear their outstanding service charges.

Emaar Properties told this website in July it resorts to making defaulter lists public in order to make dodgers pay. Payment notices are “door-delivered” to tenants to keep them aware of their landlord’s tardiness.

Dubai Properties Group, master developer of Jumeirah Beach Residence, also has adopted the policy, displaying defaulter list in lobbies, asking defaulters to pay up for the “safety and security” of their community.