UAE | General

Palm beach battle: flat owners to move court

Shoreline residents threaten legal action against developer Nakheel for locking beach access doors

  • By Anjana Kumar, Staff reporter
  • Published: 00:00 January 26, 2012
  • XPRESS

Shoreline Apartments on The Palm Jumeirah
  • Image Credit: Gulf News Archives
  • Shoreline Apartments on The Palm Jumeirah where residents are caught in a row with Nakheel over beach access.

Dubai: Shoreline Apartments owners on The Palm Jumeirah are moving court against developer Nakheel for locking the access doors to the beach in their buildings, XPRESS can reveal.

Nader Alizadeh, Chairman of Interim Owners' Association (IOA) for Shoreline buildings 3 and 4, told XPRESS: "We are filing a case against Nakheel to open the back doors of seven Shoreline buildings as we believe they have been locked illegally. Both the front and back door of the buildings belong to the owners and nobody has a right to lock it."

He said back doors of beach-facing buildings 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 9 have been locked in a beach access row between the owners and Nakheel.

The dispute took a serious turn on January 21 when some owners called police to get the doors unlocked. Alizadeh said: "Although the police refused to file a report on that day, they issued a statement saying that back doors were locked…residents asked for it to be unlocked…and Nakheel refused to unlock them. We will be taking this police report and seeking the court order for the doors to be opened," he said.

Buildings 1 to 10 sit on the right side of the Palm facing the beach, while buildings 11 to 20 sit on the left.

There are 20 Shoreline buildings in Palm Jumeirah of which four buildings — 7, 8, 10 and 18 — have been bought by individuals or companies and have separate building management companies. Apartments in the remaining 16 buildings were sold by Nakheel to individuals. There are 13 IOAs managing these buildings.

Shoreline owners met on January 23 to finalise market fee costs for building management and compare them to actual costs levied by Nakheel.

"From 2007 until 2009, Nakheel did not have approval for service charges from the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (Rera). In addition, these charges were high and not acceptable to owners. Hence, we requested an audit to be done to scrutinise all charges laid down in that period and see how they compared to market rates. We have seen huge variations in the two and Rera accepted that we could bring those papers to them. Rera will ask Nakheel to set up a technical committee to resolve this matter so that budget allocations are appropriately done," said Alizadeh.

"The owners have issues and problems [but] we still love Dubai. All of us have made investments here and we want to make it work well for us," he added.

Comments (5)

Comment
  1. Added 11:33 January 27, 2012

    The list of grudges against Nakheel is endless -- from poor building construction and late delivery of properties to loss of opprotunities and abuse of management, the problems are endless.

    Anonymous, dubai, United Arab Emirates

  2. Added 16:48 January 26, 2012

    Property bubble burst has already put Dubai investors into deep financial issues. They have already paid a heavy price. Palm residents were promised of a good clean private beach access and should be provided the same. Anyways, I have seen those beaches and they are dead without much maintenance.

    Adnan Shabbir, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

  3. Added 16:26 January 26, 2012

    It's funny to see the type of issues that crop up between owners and developers in this part of the world everyday. It's a lesson not to invest here unless there are adequate protection laws for property buyers.

    Anonymous, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

  4. Added 13:28 January 26, 2012

    All these legal and regulatory headaches, maintenance fees and service charges make the average investor think twice about buying an appartment anywhere in the UAE. I have often been tempted to buy a property in the UAE and hesitated only because of issues of such nature. I don't want to buy my dream home and then end up having a nightmare instead. Rera and its equivalent authorities in all Emirates should do something to stop this.

    Anonymous, abu dhabi, United Arab Emirates

  5. Added 13:16 January 26, 2012

    This is a form of consumer protection and Nakheel has gotten away with too many issues in the past. It is time for cases to come up in court and start setting precedent to shape the regulations. I am surprised that the tenant association was recognised, as this is a usual issue. People want to get togehter and air their grievences as one group. They all have the same problems it seems, and it is good to see that the divide and conquer attitude not being taken by regulators. No more will a consumer feel helpless against a giant like Nakheel. This gives Dubai more credibility. Hooray!

    Omar Alkhan, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

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