| Kippreport.com

Service fees dispute on the Palm. Here we go again…

June 20, 2012 4:51 by Eva Fernandes

When it comes to Nakheel and the age old service fee disputes with its tenants and landlords, saying it feels like Groundhog Day, feels like Groundhog Day.

This time around the complaints come from the residents of Marina Residence on the Palm who have had their six swimming pools drained and unfilled for the past 10 days. Nakheel is threatening to shut down the lifts and gyms if the service fees amounting to Dh15 million remain unpaid. Of course, Nakheel has gone about the matter in its usual classy way, initially denying the pools were merely ‘under maintenance.’

Unsurprisingly, it is the tenants who are trapped between the tug of war between developer and landlord. Kipp isn’t going to waste our breath stating the obvious. Instead we will let the Kipp of five months ago do the talking: “Clearly somebody’s got to step in because neither the tenants or the developer seem ready to back down any time soon. If RERA says the developer has no rights to block entry, then the developer should be reprimanded for continue to do so. If RERA tells tenants to pay up, then there should be a similar course of action for non-payment. Simple as that. Doesn’t the A in RERA stand for Authority? Somebody’s got to end this thing so we can move on to the numerous cases of people who’ve poured their savings into a off-plan project that will most likely never see the light of day.”

Phew, if we’ve said it once we have said a thousand times before. It is sad that the past instances of service fees disputes haven’t yet set a precedent for how unpaid the service fees issue is to be resolved. We could excuse the initial confusion surrounding the matter with the blanket ‘immature young realty market’ claim, but at what point will the sector start growing up?