Murano Residences will bring affordable, high-quality family residences, assures Adnan Al Hamly, CEO of Ghreiwati Property Development (GDP), which has launched its flagship residential project in Al Furjan in Dubai. The project consists of five towers with the first tower expected to be completed by 2018 and the entire community by 2019. Hamly explains the company’s focus on this development and its future plans.
What makes Murano Residences different from others in the market?
Murano is a community of five residential buildings. Each tower consists of 114 units, offering one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments, but no studios. We want to create a family environment in the entire development. So each tower will have amenities such as a private gym, barbecue area, kids’ playroom and separate swimming pools for kids and adults. Also, location wise,
Al Furjan has a school plot near our development, and there is a park and shopping centre for full family convenience. Each of our towers will also have three retail units on the ground floor.
We started with designing and getting approval for all five plots. We have completed shoring for the first three towers together, and the main contractor has already started construction work on the first tower. For this tower, our focus is not just to build and sell but also to develop and show the world the class, quality, and luxury we will be providing in all our projects. All the five towers will be constructed with a small gap of three to five months between them. The first tower is expected to be completed and handed by mid of 2018, and the full project of all five towers is supposed to be delivered by 2019.
What is the payment plan you are offering?
Buyers will pay 40 per cent during construction, 24 per cent at the time of handover and the remaining 36 per cent in 36 months after handover, i.e., 1 per cent per month. With such a payment plan, we are assuring our clients of the quality and comfort we are committing to at the time of sale, as we continue our relationship with them until after the delivery of the project. We are offering affordable units, not by going cheap on prices or quality, but by effectively planning the apartment sizes and design, which minimises wastage, and providing them with a high-quality, luxury living experience.
How does Murano Residences combine affordability with luxury?
We use a different methodology. We are not selling cheap-quality units to make it affordable. Instead we are building reasonable sizes of high-quality units that are practically priced, targeting middle-income buyers. The instalment amount for the cheapest apartment in the development is Dh6,210 per month with a post-handover payment plan, so salaried employees earning a minimum of Dh13,000 to Dh15,000 can afford to live in it.
Rooms are efficiently planned and designed to make all spaces usable, no area wastage, giving buyers real value for money. The units will provide the comfort of living in a one-bedder for the price of a studio. If you compare rates, in Discovery Gardens a studio apartment starts from Dh530,000. Our one-bedders, with a hall and washroom, starts at Dh621,000. At 544.13 sq ft, it is spacious enough for a small family.
Why did you chose Al Furjan?
The area is near Dubai’s prominent locations such as the World Expo 2020 site, new Al Maktoum International Airport, Jebel Ali, Dubai Investments Park and the new IMG theme park. The focus of the authorities of Dubai is to develop a new city in the area, and we hear that Emirates and Flydubai will move towards the new Al Maktoum airport. So in the coming five years, we anticipate there will be good demand for rental units in that area. Hence, the place offers an opportunity to investors. Moreover, the new residential zones in Dubai such as the Dubai Marina, Discovery Gardens and Emirates Hills are close by and the infrastructure has been done by the master developer years ago, so we will not wait for extra time after handover for infrastructure works to be ready, like in many other areas.
Do you have any other property investments in Dubai?
We have a partnership with Polo Town Houses and Residence that consists of 106 townhouses that have been completed and handed over to clients. There is also a four-storey building that will be delivered in the coming months. For the last eight years, we worked in a strategic collaboration with the region’s leading developers and have established and maintained a strong and long-term relationship with these developers. We’ve collaborated in all areas of real estate development as developers, suppliers, consultants and contractors in our home country with varied associates and, hence, we did not face any difficulties in terms of collaboration with some of the said developers for our first project in Dubai.
What other projects are in the pipeline?
We have around 30 plots for villa and townhouse projects parallel to Murano Residences in Al Furjan. These are dedicated for independent signature units that will be built to order. We are also planning to acquire plots in new areas of Dubai, including Meydan. We have plans to go into the hospitality segment since our group has interests in hospitality outside the UAE. However, for now, our focus is Murano, as we are not in a hurry to push all projects in the Dubai market.
Have you started selling units at Murano?
We have sold over 50 per cent of the 114 apartments in the first tower without holding any launch event or mass-marketing activity. We get individual enquiries and also work with sales agencies. We have not opened sales for the other towers yet. Our buyers in the development are a mix of Asian, Arab and European, both end users and investors.
What are your views about the Dubai real estate market?
Real estate in every place works in waves. In the last two years, the Dubai property market had slowed down, but we anticipate the market to gradually come back in the first quarter of next year. Good developers know when to launch projects in the market; we consider this year the perfect time for us to start our project, so when the property market is coming back, we already have our presence set here. We can see the market improving and expect it to go up steadily in the next two to three years.
In the present market, the property investors are looking at rental income and not the high price mark-up that used to be the case in previous years. We analysed [the relationship] between return on investment and size, and then came up with very practical unit sizes, which would be easy to rent out and achieve high returns.
With our payment plan, investors can make at least 14 per cent return in the first year after handover, since by 2018 they would have paid only 64 percent of the total property value and yet they will already start earning income.
What is your background in real estate?
I am a civil engineer. I have a successful contracting and consulting company back home in Syria. I have worked in partnership with Mr Ghreiwati, whose family has been involved in diversified businesses, including trading, manufacturing, investments and property development, for more
than 100 years. His company was a supplier to many projects in the region where I worked as contractor and consultant. We developed a cordial business relationship. In Dubai, I represent GPD Ghreiwati Property Development as CEO.
In 2005-06, the UAE’s largest property companies, Emaar and Invest Group Overseas, selected us as their trusted associate for projects in Syria. Our formula for success as a contractor, consultant and developer for the past 25 years has been to build long-term business relationships with our associates, investors and clients
