You have most probably seen the pictures of luxurious homes on The Palm Jumeirah and secretly envied the people who occupy them. Guess what? We don’t!
As beautiful as the houses look on pictures, a single visit will make you doubt if it is really so nice to live on The Palm as it looks. During our second visit, we come up to a conclusion that at this time it is better not to live in one of the luxurious homes on The Palm.
There is a few reasons that discouraged us and in a nutshell these are: crowded construction site environment, busy roads, unfriendly security staff and time consuming procedures.
When it opened a few years back, The Palm Jumeirah was a quiet and charming island where only privileged by wealth poeple resided. So, an average weekend visitor would have experienced picturesque surroundings, easy driving around and utmost respect from staff at the leisure facilities.
Nowadays, from the beginning of the trunk of The Palm you can see only construction sites, cranes, slow moving trucks and workers. The traffic is slowed down by road humps placed every few hundred meters or so. No, it is not pleasant to drive on The Palm at all.
Pleanty of new hotels are being build on the both sides of the road, right next to each other. Residential buildings are also still under construction. In the same time, it is not easy to reach every one of the already functioning buildings. You have to drive long way until you find a U-turn or under-bridge to reach where you are going.
And while it is easier to view the apartments, some of them which were handed a few years back already look worn out. Here we are talking about let’s say a one bedroom apartment available for rent of $40,000 or a three bedroom penthouse with a rental tag of $120,000.
To view the luxurious houses on The Palm is also a time consuming and unpleasant task. At the gate of every community there are barriers where security guards will treat you unkind and demand security passes. To obtain an entry permission you have to visit the developer’s office, Nakheel, which is located at the end of The Palm’s trunk and you need to drive back and forth to reach it, while the entrance to its parking is not clearly directed for first-time visitors. Once you reach the office, you will find tens of drivers, housemaids and other workers queuing to obtain the same security passes. This means that it may take a few hours to get a pass providing you have in hand all of the required documents. Otherwise it may take a few days of coming and going.
The security staff on The palm Jumeirah is paid simply to say “No” to every request and to make your life more complicated. If you have imagined that you will be greeted and offered assistance by uniformed polite and smiling security guards, you are headed for a shocking disappointment. After hearing “No” to several questions, we asked the supervisor of the patrol what he is paid for and he answered that this is not our business.
Surely one might rise a few arguments, but if you plan to buy a house priced somewhere between $2,000,000 and $20,000,000, you will have high expectations about the quality of living, the maintenance of the area and the attitude of the locals towards you.
Altogether, it doesn’t take long to find out that there are more pleasant places to live in Dubai where the environment is cleaner, quieter and friendlier, let alone less costly.
