Omar Kassim

As usual it has been too long since my last post. Keeping in mind the wise words of a good friend - ‘need more articles to capture a wider reader base’. So here goes:

I think I’m getting quite good at these gripe posts - hopefully this should be the last one for sometime. (Ok, maybe not!)

Going back to April 2007, I wrote about Burj Dubai Square and my thoughts on the project as an investment. It turns out that the investment was a good one, with prices appreciating by forty to fifty percent to date.

We purchased a unit in Burj Dubai Square as the new corporate offices for al bogari in late May 2007. We were reliably told that since the project was almost complete, handover was imminent.

When we received the contract a few weeks later, the handover date indicated was September 2007. A far cry from our expectation of June or July 2007. No matter, it was only a few months.

When the September deadline approached, Emaar issued an official letter to us, indicating that handover had to be pushed back to December 2007 in order to ensure that ‘the best quality property’ was delivered to it’s customers.

The months went by and the December deadline approached. Four or five days before the deadline, a new letter was issued stating that handover had to again be pushed back to March 2008, citing the ‘quality property’ excuse.

This project was now really starting to hurt us, since we had put a lot things on hold so that we could carry them out once we had moved into the new offices.

We continued to push Emaar for answers, through as many avenues as possible including their sales staff, their customer care center as well as their strangely thin ‘commercial team’. You would think that the largest property developer in the region would be able to provide us with some answers - not a chance. I found it bemusing when HSBC recently stated that Emaar one of the world most misunderstood $20bn plus companies (Dubai Share Talk has an extract here).

With reference to my experience, I’m pretty sure that no one at Emaar understands the company either.

As the March deadline approached, a fresh letter was issued to us stating that the handover had to be pushed back to June 2008, again citing reasons of quality. Absolutely incredible.

By this time I had enough, I contacted lawyers (some who seemed afraid to look into the case, mentioning no names), emailed their directors, contacted director’s personal assistants to set up meetings and got just about no where. I finally managed to get a couple of members of their commercial team to sit down and meet.

The irony of the whole situation is that Emaar leased parts of the project on a half or full floor basis, those tenants have been up and running for at least three months. In the same building as al bogari’s unit. Discrimination?

During the course of my ‘investigation’, my fit out team identified ISG Asia to be the facilities manager. They have been extremely helpful in obtaining drawings, as well as telling us the real reason why the property was not being handed over.

Burj Square was constructed for either half or full floor occupation. Without considering whether the space could be easily split into smaller units, Emaar went ahead and sold off the space. When the building’s contractor was approached to make the required changes, I was told that they walked off the job saying that they had completed the job as it was initially specified.

As of today, Emaar has identified a new contractor who has started working on splitting up the space, including placing partitions and re-doing mechanical, electrical and plumbing work to split up each unit’s utilites.

My unit remains unfinished, I have been promised a date of 25th May 2008 as when I will get handover and be allowed to start fitting out the space.

Emaar announced it’s Q1 results on 16th April 2008 - net income fell 3.8 percent, year on year. Emaar’s share price has declined 24% this year.

Serves them right.