Nakheel, a Dubai World company and one of the world’s largest real estate developers, has introduced a new sealed bid process for land sales.

Last week, Nakheel sold 23 plots within the Canal District at Waterfront in this way and in the process set new standards of transparency and openness for land sales in Dubai.

Approved by the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA), the sealed bid process changes the fundamental terms and conditions for buyers of the plots and means they are obligated to develop the purchased land and cannot re-sell. Real estate brokers are also not permitted to purchase land through the new system.

Manal Shaheen, director sales, marketing and customer service, said: “We introduced a sealed bid procedure at Waterfront to inject greater integrity, honesty and fairness into the sales process. Transparency is very important to us at Nakheel and this is one of a raft of initiatives we are undertaking.

“We wanted to make the process a strict and regulated one; it is this way that benefits all parties involved. The new terms and conditions under the sealed bid process have a positive impact for all investors in a certain phase or area of a development. As buyers must develop rather than sell on the land, all investors can be guaranteed that neighboring plots will be developed and not left unoccupied.”

For the sealed bid process for Canal District at Waterfront, Nakheel invited a selection of pre-qualified investors to attend an event at the Raffles Hotel, Dubai that was overseen by an auditor. One plot was auctioned per hour over a five day period.  Bids for each plot were submitted by interested parties in sealed envelopes with the contents reviewed by the auditors and the winning result revealed publicly to the room of potential investors. 

Shaheen continued: “What we witnessed last week was a never seen before initiative in the real estate market in Dubai. At Nakheel, we pride ourselves on leading the way in best practice across all our business activity; and this is yet another example of where we have strived to set new standards within the Dubai property market. We hope that this will pave the way for other developers in the region to follow suit.”

The Canal District is a highly desirable location within Nakheel’s Waterfront development. Built over 1.8 million sq m of land, it will ultimately house a population of 75,000 people and is due for completion in 2016. During the sealed bid process, one plot at the Canal District was sold for hotel and retail development, 14 for mixed use development and eight for residential.

Waterfront is the world’s largest coastal development and it will provide more than 70 km of coastline to Dubai. It is an entirely new masterplanned city, which will become home to an estimated population of 1.5 million people.  - TradeArabia News Service