Dubai: The reserve price for the auction of the ground plus 32 storeys has been lowered from last week’s Dh361 million to Dh325.3 million.
Interested parties have the deadline till 5 pm today (May 31) to put in their bids. The previous week’s try failed to get any bids.
“Even dropping the reserve price by Dh36 million may not be enough to convince potential bidders,” said an industry source keenly watching the latest episode in the long-running Marina 101 saga. “It shows that the seller is under pressure and willing to make major cuts on their prices.”
Who’s the seller?
The Marina 101 project is now 16 years in the making. At its 2005-06 launch, it was among the initial set of signature skyscrapers Dubai’s landscape would be decorated with. However, the Dh1 billion project – which is 97.3% finished – ran into cost and time overwhelms, and was always unable to overcome that.
The project stopped in 2019 with pretty much the entirety of the external construction complete. But the developer, Sheffield, had by then added to a sizable debt with the bank, with India’s Bank of Baroda being the main one.
The auction process has been initiated by the Bank of Baroda. “For many, it would still make sense for the banks to sell off the entire building rather than the G+32 portion,” said an industry source. “Would anyone want to pick up just the hotel portion when the entire project might have legal liabilities?”
Today’s end of bidding time will give clear answers to that.