The Dubai developer Nakheel is set to charge anyone attending a land auction for plots at Jumeirah Park an entry fee of Dh1,000.
In a sure sign of the Dubai property market heating up, Nakheel said that potential buyers coming to the auction on Wednesday at the Nakheel sales office would be asked to pay the Dh1,000 registration fee.
Registration for the event opened today and will entitle entrants to bid for plots measuring 8,820 square feet at the 350 hectare community.
Nakheel said that it had reduced its registration fee from Dh5,000 back in 2012.
“A registration fee is charged because we want to attract serious investors,” a Nakheel spokeswoman said. “The fee has been reduced following feedback from customers.”
Jumeirah Park is expected to comprise around 3,000 homes.
Despite construction delays caused by the global financial crisis, Nakheel said it had already completed 1,795 luxury villas at the development and was in the process of constructing almost 800 more.
Nakheel reported that last year it had completed more than 3,150 new homes and that the amount of cash it had collected from customers nearly doubled from Dh3.7bn in 2012 to Dh7.1bn in 2013 as home buyers made their final payments on projects that had been delayed by the financial crisis including Jumeirah Park.
Nakheel was part of the Dubai World conglomerate that spooked financial markets in 2009 when it asked creditors for a debt repayment standstill.
In 2011 it was taken over by the Dubai Government and restructured its debts.
lbarnard@thenational.ae
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