Jordan's real estate sector just keeps on running

Early last month The Jordanian Company for Real Estate, otherwise known as Taameer, signed a deal with the Housing and Urban Development Corporation to develop the $900 million Al Jiza Residential City 37 kilometres south of Amman, which will provide around 16,000 residential units as well as offices and retail outlets.

The agreement will see an area covering 75 million square feet given over to Taameer in two phases. The firm will be involved in all aspects of the project including planning, the provision of infrastructure and essential services as well as the construction and finishing. The first phase, comprising 30 million square feet, is expected to be ready by 2012 and will include a significant number of homes in addition to facilities like schools, medical centres, mosques, roads and public parks.

Affordable housing

The Al Jiza scheme sees a public-private partnership looking to drive forward King Abdullah's desire to generate new housing in the kingdom that is aimed at all income brackets. The development will be primarily geared towards middle and low income groups. The majority of the residential units will be apartments, offered in five different sizes, while a number of villas, measuring 3,000 square feet, will also be built. On the commercial side, there will be 2,010 units, split equally between office spaces and retail outlets.

Taameer is certainly committed to making sure the Al Jiza Residential City is within the financial reach of as many Jordanians as possible. Dr Khaled Al Wazani, the firm's GM, said the prices of the apartments would start from around $28,400 and, earlier this month, Taameer signed a home finance deal with the HSBC, whereby the bank will offer to cover 70 per cent of the value of any unit over a period of up to 20 years. The HSBC tie-up includes other Taameer projects in Aqaba and Madaba too.

Al Wazani also revealed that around 50 per cent of Jordanians simply cannot afford to buy even fairly basic properties measuring less than 700 square feet. Therefore, an important by-product of the large-scale development at Al Jiza will undoubtedly be the creation of job opportunities in the area and, subsequently, a demand for services once the project is finished and occupied.

Top-end offering

While the Al Jiza Residential City has somewhat proletarian ambitions, the Bayan Holding Company, a Kuwaiti private shareholding firm, has quite the opposite with its plans to build the $600 million Royal Jordan Spa on the banks of the Dead Sea which, according to Reuters, will be run by Singapore's luxury hotel operator, the Banyan Tree.

Bayan, a joint venture between Bahrain's Gulf Finance House and the Kuwait Finance and Investment Company, will certainly need the kudos that comes with an operator like the Banyan Tree once its resort is complete as the Dead Sea area is becoming arguably the most exclusive, and competitive, leisure destination in Jordan. Several top-end resorts run by the likes of Kempinski, Movenpick and Marriott are already up and running while major real estate developers such as the UAE's Emaar Properties and Jordan's own Saraya Holdings are planning ambitious mixed use projects in the locality.

The Dead Sea spa would not be the Bayan Holding Company's first foray into Jordan as among its other projects is the development of the Royal Village, part of the mega $1.2 billion Royal Metropolis on the outskirts of Amman, and the firm is also looking at various possibilities at the Aqaba Special Economic Zone.

Making sense

Bayan is also keen to consider industrial projects in the kingdom - a sector that Taameer has already committed to with its agreement late last year to build an industrial city at the Al Mushatta project. While numerous luxury resorts and exclusive communities are being planned and built in Jordan, as elsewhere in the region, there has also been a recognition of the fact that plenty of affordable housing needs to be provided for ordinary working families along with business parks and zones where they can work and, at the same time, boost the country's economy.