Dubai estate agent touts three-year repayment

A Dubai real estate agent is aiming to drum up interest in the much delayed Dubai Sports City development by offering apartments with a 38 percent initial deposit and three-year repayment plan.

Silver Heights, the sales arm of real estate developer Orion Holding, is marketing the units at Olympic Park.

According to property listings portal Bayut.com, Olympic Park units start from AED431,040 (US$117,350) for a one-bedroom. With a 38 percent down payment of AED163,780 (US$44,589), a repayment over three years would be around AED7,423 (US$2,020) per month.

The agent's report claimed “that factors like affordability, thin traffic, highway location, modern amenities and global sport academies have made Dubai Sports City a favourite destination for people working in TECOM and Jebel Ali Free Zone areas”.

Despite the agent’s claims and the latest offer, Dubai Sports City has long been the subject of controversy between disgruntled investors and sub developers on some of the stalled residential projects.

In September last year, over 370 investors in some Dubai Sports City real estate projects were due to hand in a petition to Dubai Land Department urging authorities to audit the project and investigate delays by third-party residential real estate subcontractors.

Launched in 2003, Dubai Sports City is part of the Dubailand master development and was set to include cricket stadium, 60,000 multi-purpose stadium, 10,000-seat indoor stadium, sports academies, golf course and a range of third-party residential and business premises.

According to the investors’ petition, they claim “what we have is a half built sports city, with many building plots standing abandoned and investors chasing non-existent developers to try to get their money”.

While the US$4bn project continues to host a series of high profile international sporting and entertainment events, including the Pakistan Australia Twenty20 International cricket series, Dubai was one of the markets hardest hit by the global downturn, with real estate prices dropping by up to 60 percent and nearly half of projects in the emirate stalled or cancelled.