August 08, 2006

When academics look back on the Late Great Housing Bubble, the poster-child city might surprise you

Sure, Phoenix, San Diego, Tampa, DC, Boston, Vegas, Naples and Sacramento are obvious crash victims, but worldwide, one city rises to the top.

Rampant speculation, buyers made up of speculators buying from other speculators (the perfect Ponzi scheme), a god-forsaken area to live in (you thought Phoenix was hot?), stupid prices, no economy to support it (after homebuilding is done), and a collective "what the heck were they thinking" heard around the world for hundreds if not thousands of years to come.

It's Dubai. The world-wide
housing bubble epicenter and future environmental wasteland.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - With 14,000 laborers toiling day and night, the first of Dubai's three palm-shaped islands is finally about to get its first residents.

The Palm Jumeirah, a 12-square-mile island group, is part of what's billed as the largest land-reclamation project in the world, the product of five years of brute hauling of millions of tons of Persian Gulf sand and quarried rock

Many observers believe Dubai's frenetic homebuilding will soon outstrip demand.

"We've still got a shortage of properties in Dubai, but that's likely to become an excess in next six or 12 months," said Steve Brice, an economist with Standard Chartered Bank in Dubai.

Brice said year-old estimates that 50,000 housing units would hit the market in 2006 will be more than doubled. Nakheel, one of three big developers here, has said it will release 60,000 units in the 2nd half of 2006 alone.

Nakheel's two copycat Palms, the Palm Jebel Ali and Palm Deira, have also been delayed by design changes and other factors, Kazim said. A nearly finished fourth Nakheel archipelago, shaped like a map of the world, has attracted few buyers and remains mostly unsold.

Kazim said The World's sales trouble stems from simple economics: Nakheel is selling empty islands for tens of millions of dollars only to builders promising low-density luxury.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

they basically used underpaid slaves with no legal rights to build this fake paradise, like arizona using mexicans I'd say

Anonymous said...

LMAO. There are not that many people in the world that are so rich they would want to buy a place in Dubai, even as a vatation home. I can GUARANTEE you that if I had as much money as Bill Gates, I still would have ZERO interest in having a place so close to ground ZERO of terrorism.

Bill said...

And in the middle of the ocean..this in itself is a no brainer.

A Tsunami would wipe this artificial Island off of the map.

Anonymous said...

Aha! I just realized that housing/building booms have been going on since ancient times. This is just like the building of the pyramids in Egypt, complete with slave rebellions. Way back then, people were probably talking about how crazy it was to build in the middle of the desert. LOL! Forget all this stuff about pyramids being built as ancient religious monuments. What a hoax! They were just old time condos complexes for the rich. LMAO! The more things change, the more things stay the same.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, it is being built right near one of earth's MAJOR tectonic plates. Great idea. A major earthquake will cause liquefaction. Can't wait for that disaster.

Anonymous said...

Well presented - panicearly.

Bill said...

I had to get an abortion last week. My husband and I always wanted little ones, but after we realized we could never afford a house for the little one we did what we had to. I refuse to let my child grow up in a rental.


Fuck off with your Abortion crap..are you confused about what site you are on ? or did you forget to take your meds this morning.

Anonymous said...

Dubai is capitalism on crack.

Marinite said...

They were just old time condos complexes for the rich

"Had a condo made of stoner".

The song King Tut by Steve Martin

Anonymous said...

Forget Egypt, Dubai is just Atlantis thousands of years in the future. That's all Atlantis was, a crappy hotel/condo/luxury residential development in the middle of the sea somewhere. And then they had global warming and it sank, or was flooded, or they had a nuclear power plant malfunction and blew themselves up. Well, that solves it all. Nothing mysterious about it. Atlantis was nothing more than the product of an ancient housing boom. Wonder if they had a Federal Reserve, too? Ahh, those pesky housing booms. Been causing trouble for eons.

foxwoodlief said...

You forget that with the rise of Islamic fundamentalists in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebannon, hundreds of thousands of Muslims will leave and move to Dubai and buy all those condos to live in rather than live under the yoke of their religous fanatic brothers.

If not, perfect solution for the Palestinian problem or the Jewish one! Just move one of the groups to all that reclaimed land and luxery homes and conflict solved.

Anonymous said...

Good national geographic program on the islands of sand. As another reader pointed out, it's in a seismic zone and these hotels and condos are going to be built on the posterchild of liquefaction during the next significant quake! I would love to visit this place if it ever gets built just so I can say to my grandchildren that I saw it before it was destroyed one day.

Ali, in Cali said...

Foxwoodlief,

Excellent conflict resolution suggestion. LMAO. How do we decide who stays and who leaves?

Anonymous said...

Israel will take care of this one in the coming Middle East war...

Anonymous said...

You are all a bunch of retards really. Jealous and retarded individuals.