For those of you not up to date with all that is going on, or more precisely, not going on, at the Orient Palace development in Bodrum on the southern Turkish coast, you should take a look at the Eye on Worldwide forum or some of the posts on Ask About Money. This will give you some idea of the problems and complaints that buyers there have had and, unfortunately, are still having.The picture here is of the Orient Palace in Alanya, by the same developer, which was built with no great problems and is the basis on which many investors took a punt with the proposed Bodrum version.
Things have so far being going pretty badly, the developer has run out of money because stage payments were tied to delivery of Tapu's, unfortunately the local council stopped issuing them for a time, which meant that all the developer's cash ran dry. Never a good thing in a development. But there may be some light at the end of the tunnel, we just hope it is not the light from an oncoming train, as the saying goes. Although talks with an unnamed proposed German investor appear to have fallen through at this stage, it would appear that a new Turkish investor may well be on the horizon.
Obviously we don't wish to get investors in the project too excited, although this is probably a difficult task at this stage anyway because they have had so much heartbreak with the development so far. The fact that the last 'white knight' didn't materialise will make them far more wary of so called 'good news'. We are just hoping that this particular investor will be capable of seeing the project through, presuming he is signed up fully to begin with.
Unfortunately the advent of any investor is not going to rescue the rental guarantees which have been some of the problem with this project in any case. A guaranteed 10% return on investment for 10 years sounded too good to be true and, unfortunately for investors in the project, it doesn't much look like it will ever materialise.
Those invested in the development have had their sights lowered considerably. Most would now consider actually getting their property built and receipt of a Tapu (Turkish title deed) a success at this stage. This development has a staggering 66% Irish investors (over 440 units) sold by three agents in Ireland so the interest in this development is phenomenal. There will be a lot of people out there holding their breaths and hoping that the new investor will not alone come on board but will allow this project to be completed to a high standard. The development is meant to be 5* but the worry is always that a new investor, coming in with their own money and the power that brings, will want to change things.
If there is more info on this situation we'll let you know as soon as we do.
www.OverseasCafe.com
5 comments:
Hi,
What has been published is OLD NEWS and yet NOT correct anymore. There is a new investor with whom contracts are signed, e.g. Kolan Group from Istanbul.
The biggest newspaper in THe Netherlands, 'De Telegraaf' already made a positive publication about this yesterday (03-03-2008).
So the light at the tunnel is not an approaching train but the needed step forward with a new investor on board and a new building company involved for finishing the appartments and the building of the SPA hotel as part of this magnificant 5* project.
Best regards,
Hans Bartsen
representative for the Dutch and Belgium investors in this project
Thanks for the comment Hans.
Things obviously move a lot quicker in Holland and Belgium than they do in Ireland. We would consider information that is a day old to still be fairly topical. The announcement of the new investor is not, as yet, widely known in Ireland and seeing as 66% of the investors are Irish do you not feel the Irish public should perhaps be made aware of the situation?
Most Irish people can't speak or read Dutch so the fact that it was in the Dutch media means nothing over here.
It is also a bit hard to blame investors for being somewhat sceptical about current negotiations on the project given the history of it to date.
I'm an Irish investor.
I, and all of my fellow investors who are in touch with their selling agents, have been aware of the new investor as long as Hans has.
Everything Hans says is true.
Don't take correction so personally.
Richard Walsh
Richard, it's not being taken personally at all, but Hans is very bolshie for someone involved in a company with a track record as poor as his in terms of keeping its investors up to date on what is going on at Orient Palace.
We are aware that investors have been aware of this development for some time, the general public has not been. This makes it newsworthy and it is potentially good news for a change, which we're glad to spread.
I'd still be inclined to put the celebration on ice until we see concrete evidence of what the new investor is actually going to do.
Believe me we hope that it will be the white knight that all investors are looking for, the last thing we need in the industry is more bloodshed. Best of luck with it.
Please refer to our most recent blog on this topic which you can find here - http://overseascafe.blogspot.com/2008/09/orient-palace-bodrum-pursued-in-irish.html.
We hope that Hans and Richard will be as positive as they were previously on this matter, but we doubt it somewhat. Things are not, it would appear, going according to plan.
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