Manazel makes further cuts to planned Jordan development

Abu Dhabi-based Manazel Real Estate said it has reduced for the second time the number of homes in its long-awaited housing project in Jordan, its first outside the UAE, because of “market feedback”.

In a statement to the Abu Dhabi bourse, Manazel said it will be marketing 1,253 apartments and villas at its Manazel Amman development during the Cityscape Abu Dhabi property exhibition, which starts on Tuesday.

The number of homes in the project has fallen by about a fifth from the 1,600 villas and apartments it was marketing at last year’s Cityscape. That is about one-third fewer than the 1,863 villas Manazel marketed in the Jordanian project – then known as Amman Gardens – when it was launched in 2008.

"Numbers are based on the new project layout, which adds other elements into the mixed-use development after receiving further guidance from market feedback," a Manazel spokesman told The National.

Manazel Amman will also include retail areas, mosques, gyms, pharmacies as well as a medical centre and kindergarten on site.

The company announced a plethora of ambitious projects in the mid 2000s as the UAE benefited from an increase in real estate prices. Manazel completed schemes including Al Reef Villas and Capital Mall in the Abu Dhabi and Dune Village in Dubai. But it was hit badly by the global financial crisis forcing it to put many of its plans on ice.

The company is working on long-awaited plans to build a 70,000-square-metre Capital Health Care City hospital and property project in Abu Dhabi and a tourism project in Ghantoot.

“In the pursuit of delivering sustained and optimal shareholder value, Manazel remains focused on the delivery of unique and diverse real estate and tourism projects, which reflects the company’s commitment to its on-going expansion strategy to enter new growth markets, which will both diversify the company’s real estate portfolio while also creating new revenue streams also fulfilling its revenue diversification strategy,” said Mohamed Al Qubaisi, Manazel’s chairman, in a statement.

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