Al Salam City

[shawarma]

• Property name: Al Salam City in Umm Al Quwain (UAQ) is planned to have a population of 300,000 or 500,000 (different sources) in about 1000 buildings, launched July 2005. Except in May 2008, there were reports of Al Salam possibly being cancelled (see next post).
• Development: Al Salam City
• Location: Umm Al Quwain along the Emirates Road (311 Road)
• Emirate: UAQ
• Completion date of construction (expected or actual): On hold or cancelled.
• Completion date of construction (scheduled): 2009 for phase I
• Start date of construction:
• Project value: AED 30 billion
• Area (size): 220 million square feet
• Developer: Umm Al Quwain Real Estate Development Company LLC - a joint venture between Tameer Holding Investments, Ahmed bin Sulaiman Al Rajhi, and the UAQ Goverment.
• Consultants:
• Architect / Designer:
• Project manager:
• Construction firm:
• Main/exclusive sales agent:
• Foreign / Expat Ownership: freehold for UAE and GCC nationals for land, 99 year leasehold for non-GCC nationals in designated investment zones for land (?), expat freehold for buildings (?). Need to check Law no 3 of 2006 from UAQ.
• Residence visa included for expats: yes?
• February 2008 prices:
• OP per square foot: AED 550 per sq ft?
• February 2008 price per square foot:
• Telephone: Tameer Holding Investment, Abu Dhabi tel +971-2-4998888, Dubai tel +971-4-4075555 / +971-4-6010600, Sharjah tel +971-6-5195999, Amman Jordan tel +962-6-5655555 / toll-free 0800-22221 (in Jordan)
• Website:www.alsalamcity.net (alsalamcity.com is spam), andwww.tameer.net (tameer.com is for Tameer / Al-Khaleej Development Co in Bahrain, a different company). Email info @ tamweer.net.

Other facilities and information

Al Salam City will have residential apartments and villas, restaurants, mosques, schools, hotels, parks, office towers, cinemas, sports facilities including a golf course and a riding center, cultural and entertainment centers, a large shopping mall (they say it will be one of the largest in the UAE)

DubaiFAQs.com pages with related information

• Buying property in the UAE
• Real estate agents UAE
• UAE banks - list of banks operating in the UAE

Please reply to this topic with relevant information and this first post will be updated. If quoting this post, please remove unnecessary information. Thanks

In general, for all UAE property developments, information given here is usually based on information supplied from press releases, media reports, company marketing, and may not be independently confirmed. Unit sizes are unlikely to be vastly different but layout and design could change. Actual completion date could be months or even years later than promised delivery dates.

[shawarma]

Tameer UAQ government Al Salam City dispute

Emirates Business 24/7 (a UAE business newspaper) reported on 22 May 2008 that the Al Salam City project had been put "on hold". Report was based on comments from one of the sales agents, who told them the UAQ goverment doesn't have "enough resources to provide water and electricity for the city". The Sales agent also said that they had stopped taking payments for Al Salam City properties from 01 March 2008.

On 16 March 2008, the Middle East Economic Digest (MEED) reported that a desalination plant development that would have served Al Salam City, had been put on hold due to problems obtaining electricity supplies (a similar report was released on 19 March 2008 by the Oxford Business Group). The developer of the plant is Imdad, a joint venture between Al Rajhi Investment Group of Saudi, and the Umm Al Quwain Government. The plant was expected to be ready to provide fresh water by 2009.

On 25 May 2008, Emirates Business followed up the stalled Al Salam City project with a further report. The UAQ government said that it wasn't their fault the project was on hold, saying the claims of water and electricity supply problems were "mere lies that aim to impair the emirate's reputation". Emirates Business had obtained a statement from the UAQ government saying that the government was not responsible for supplying power and water, and that the other two partners in the project (Tamweer and Ahmed bin Sulaiman Al Rajhi) were using the power and water issues to "evade their contractual commitments".

Another report from Emirates Business on 22 May said that Tameer were offering refunds or transfer of funds to another project with a discount:
1. Full refund of money already paid
2. 20% discount on a purchase in the Al Arjan residential development in Dubai
3. 3% discount on any other Tameer project

Unfortunately, that means Al Salam City investors will lose money, either because they've bought recently at higher prices from a previous investor, or because the original investor has lost all the capital gains on property bought at launch. One investor said he paid 550 dhs per sq ft, and a similar property in Al Arjan is 1200-1500 dhs per sq ft.

Tameer are still advertising Al Salam City on the home page of their website as of the date of this post.

At this stage it appears as though:

1. Tameer says the Al Salam City project has been cancelled.
2. The UAQ government says the project has not been cancelled, just delayed.
3. The UAQ government says Tamweer and Ahmed bin Sulaiman Al Rajhi have not or are not fulfilling their contractual obligations.
4. It's not obvious what contractual obligations have not been fulfilled.
5. The Imdad desalination plant that would supply water to Al Salam City is on hold or cancelled.

At the very least, there will obviously be delays but at this stage it's not clear if the project has been delayed or cancelled. Tough choice for Al Salam City investors - do you hang in there, or cut your losses and go elsewhere?

A similar story appeared in Dubai a few weeks ago - Damac cancelled a project on the Jebel Ali Palm but a few days later said it was back on again after negotiations with the Dubai real estate authorities, either the Dubai Lands Department (DLD), or the Real Estate Regulatory Agency (RERA), or both. Neither of those agencies have any jurisdiction in Umm Al Quwain though.

[shawarma]

• Completion date of construction (expected or actual): On hold or cancelled.
• Completion date of construction (scheduled): 2009 for phase I
• Start date of construction:

I drove past the Al Salam City site last week and stopped for a look. The hoardings are looking faded with the display banners falling off. Peering through the fence I could see a lot of sand, a few camels, a couple of construction huts, and no evidence of any activity whatsoever. Unless there's information to indicate this project is still a go, I'd assume it's not happening. Even if something did start tomorrow, I can't see anything being ready before 2012 or so.

• The last bit of news I can find is a report from Emirates Business from 22 May 2008 saying the Al Salam City project had been put on hold with Khurram Rahman, head of the customer care section at Tameer being quoted as saying "The Al Salam City project has not been cancelled. The first cluster was expected to be ready in 2009 followed by others in the coming years. But because of lack of water and power there is a major delay."
• The Tameer website lists the Al Salam City project and says "Tameer is proud to announce its mega project in Umm Al-Quwain." along with a brief description of the project but no information about whether it's been cancelled, suspended, or is still a go.
• The Al Salam City website forwards to tameer.net.
• There was a forum at alsalamcity.biz established by what appeared to be an Al Salam City (disgruntled, obviously) investors group but that's gone offline and just has a spam page. Some posts are still in the Google cache but there's not much to read.
• It looks like an email was sent out by Tameer to Al Salam City investors in October 2008 offering one of three options (unknown what the expiry date was):
  1. Refund of money invested (probably a good option now, after the plummeting property prices in the UAE)
  2. 20% discount on another Tameer property (might also be a good option if you could pick one that was under construction and obviously going to be completed)
  3. Keep your investment on the assumption that Al Salam City is on hold rather than cancelled (you could be waiting a long time)
• Based on comments in the skyscrapercity thread (http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=237930) it looks like nobody has received any refund from Tameer yet, and are getting very little in the way of useful communication from the company, although there was one comment in November 2008 that someone had received a refund. The same poster also said that Tameer had cancelled the Al Salam City project but hadn't announced it.