The La Hoya Bay saga continues… For those who do not know: La Hoya Bay is a luxury resort development on the United Arab Emirate of Ras al Khaimah, that started in November 2007 but has yet to be started. Let me rephrase that, ground was broken in La Hoya Bay in November 2007, but a brick has yet to be laid towards building the development proper. All we have is the foundations, a show-flat, rumours, accusations, counter-accusations, controversy and a developer in jail for bouncing a cheque.
What’s going on here? In all honesty it doesn’t seem that anyone has the full answer to that question. All we know is that the developers Khoie Group agreed to buy the land for the development from the Ras al Khaimah Investment Authority (RAKIA) in early 2007 for Dh306 million ($83m), but paid only Dh72million ($20m) up front, with post-dated cheques in 6 month instalments for the rest. Off plan sales began shortly after the DH72 million ($20m) payment was complete. Ground was broken in November 2007.
Things went great for the first few months, with investors on the Sky Scraper City forum genuinely pleased at having bought into such a great opportunity, see here with pics showing it as the first RAK development to complete piling, and (if you follow that link into the forum and forward a few pages) that construction was going at a snails pace).