Nakheel not to cut prices for Jumeirah Park, Furjan projects

Developer Nakheel has no plans to cut its benchmark real estate prices for the Jumeirah Park and Al Furjan projects despite the slowdown in the global real estate market, say officials.

"At Jumeirah Park we have currently sold 70 per cent of the total 2,764 units," said Joe Barr, Managing Director, Development Projects.

"We are not looking to lower the primary prices for the rest of the villas we are planning to sell as of now. What we are doing is waiting for the market to settle down a little."

Jumeirah Park is being built in 10 phases and will consist of three, four and five-bedroom villas, with Nakheel aiming to deliver more than 900 homes by the end of this year. The project is due to be completed by the middle of 2010 and the estimated population will be around 18,000. The Oundle School has been selected as the school operator.

"Right now from a market point of view it makes sense to deliver the units that we have sold so far and then sell the rest of the project later when the market conditions are right. We will sell the rest of the units by the end of this year when conditions improve."

Barr said Nakheel was seeing strong demand for Jumeirah Park.

Meanwhile, Mohammed Rashed, General Manager of Al Furjan, said the pricing policy for new sales on the upcoming phases of the project remained unchanged.

"The development will consist of more than 4,000 units and around 2,000 villas have already been sold," he added. "All the units that have been released onto the market have been sold.

"In the future anything we sell will be as per market conditions, however, currently we are not lowering the prices of our units."

Rashed said Nakheel was not isolated from the global financial problems and the developer had readjusted to cope with what was happening around the world.

Around 300 villas are due to be delivered at another Nakheel project, Jumeirah Village, by the end of March.

Marwan Al Naqi, General Manager of the development, said: "Around 6,000 residential units from third-party developers will be handed over to the market by the end of the year. This total excludes the 2,186 villas that Nakheel will hand over as well."

Jumeirah Village is located to the north of Emirates Road and west of Al Barsha Road, bisected by Al Khail Road. The site is divided into two sections called the Triangle and the Circle. The Triangle is predominantly made up of villas surrounded by residential towers while the Circle will house commercial, residential and retail components.

When completed, Jumeirah Village will have an estimated population of 300,000. Nakheel has sold 96 per cent of the available villas and townhouses, and the developer says the project will account for eight per cent of all new homes delivered in Dubai in 2009.

The officials said Nakheel was receiving steady revenues from property purchasers across its developments. "All the units at Jumeirah Park that have been sold so far have provided a revenue stream from payments by buyers, and that has obviously allowed us to pay our contractors and designers in turn," said Barr.

"So far we have secured over 50 per cent of the payments from buyers on the units that we have sold in Jumeirah Park."

Al Naqi said around 90 per cent of payments had been received for the units sold at Jumeirah Village.

"We set a plan for buyers to make a payment every six months back in 2005," he said.

Barr added: "We are currently working on a short-term business plan with the majority of the focus on delivering projects."

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