Hi,

I was at the launch and was frankly amazed at the chaos. I was lucky in so far as I got a unit but the process left a lot to be desired - I eventually got a rushed 5 minutes with a sales guy at almost 2pm - my appointment was supposed to be at 9.15am. At that point the maximum of two properties per registration had been reduced to 1 per registration.

When I turned up at 9am - they were still pre-registering people for 8am appointments and people who were turning up at that point were getting priority - why? Why should people who turn up an hour late for an appointment automatically get priority? More importantly, why were 15 minute purchase slots taking 45 mins or more? Have Nakheel never run one of these before? Of course, we know they have, so my question is what went wrong with Badrah? Why did they a) start late, b) have time slots overrun, c) not manage the numbers of people,...etc etc?

People say that they were overwhelmed with numbers - why was that? People needed to pre-register so you would've thought that Nakheel should've known to the exact number how many were coming. Why did 2000 people get in if they were only expecting 500? They did a great job of controlling the door from the 2nd holding area to the sales area so why didn't they do a similar thing before people entered the pre-registration area? Someone came up to me to see if I would sell to him before I'd even bought - he said he didn't have an appointment - of course he could've been lying but I suspect there were a LOT of people there just chancing their arm - pushing and shoving and helping to add to the confusion.

More importantly - when I got through to the sales area, and eventually got to sit in front of a sales person, why were his first words - "we've sold out but they may release more units later"?. What were the marketing people upstairs hoping to achieve by this - was it to allow the sales people time to have lunch?? Maybe they were adjusting prices upwards - but they should've known their strategy before time, especially if they managed the number of people correctly (and they've done this before). Remember Badra is due to have 45k properties - this launch was for 1k - you therefore would've thought that increasing the prices half way through day 1 in phase 1would be largely irrelevant. What are Nakheel's product planners getting paid for??

I have bought and sold many properties in Dubai - however this was my first launch day experience so my final question is this: have other people on this forum experienced this kind of chaos before - what happened at Veneto for example? Is this market just getting too frothy? Or is it a function of Badrah being a great investment as Ali says - cheap and cheerful, great location,...?? Or rather, is it just Nakheel trying to create a frenzy?

I don't know but I'd really like to get some feedback from people as to how and why this launch was the way that it was. No rant intended...

Thanks