‘500 properties sold at The Wave’ Nick Smith, CEO, The Wave, gives an update on the progress made by the US$2 billion beachfront tourism and residential project in a chat with Akshay Bhatnagar What’s the latest wave at your end? We’ve just sold out Sinesla Island, the first island community in Oman. All 79 villas facing either the water or the gardens were sold within a few hours after the bookings opened. Give us a profile of your customers? Including Sinesla Island, we have sold 500 properties from our four releases. In terms of nationalities, we’ve got 40 per cent Omanis, 22 per cent British and 16 per cent Indians as our customers. In all, our customers belong to 34 different nationalities. Seventy-five per cent of our customers are residents of Oman. Eight per cent reside in the UAE and seven per cent in the UK. The interest and demand in The Wave has been so high that we had buyers arriving at 3 am to be ahead of others in the queue when we opened our sales booking on first-come-first served basis at 9 am in the morning. What’s the status of construction at The Wave? We have laid the foundation for 30 homes so far. The focus is on completing the properties for the buyers of the first release. We have started work on the townhouses and the first structures are going up. Al Turki Enterprises is building the villas and the infrastructure work, which includes all services. Carillion Alawi is building the townhouses. We are co-ordinating between the various contractors. The ground stabilisation work has been done for the boulevard and the iinfrastructure. Most of the primary land reclamation work is also over. When do you think the first residents will be able to move in? We expect around 20 families to move in during the first quarter of next year. The overall length of the project will be seven years. By 2013, we hope to have over 4,000 properties ready. What about the hotels at The Wave? We have already tied-up with two major hotel groups, Fairmont and Kempinski, for the first two hotels at The Wave. They both will have roughly 300 rooms each. The golf course will be near the Fairmont Hotel. We are currently in the process of finalising the design, creating the concepts and appointing architects to get the work going. The actual construction of the hotels will start next year. Both the hotels should open in 2010. The Kempinski hotel will be situated partly on reclaimed land. Your master plan has provision for four hotels. When do you plan to finalise the other two hotels? We are obligated to build a minimum of 900 hotel rooms as per our agreement with the government. We are currently concentrating on the two hotels in hand so that they come on stream as soon as possible. However, we are appraising whether to build one or two more than those already announced. Therefore, we don’t anticipate any news on further hotels this year. What’s keeping you busy? We have already let contracts worth over RO150 million. This is a huge task for us as we have to ensure that the work is done on time and as per plan. We are setting up customer management systems to serve our customers to fulfil their expectations. We are busy recruiting staff, our 50th employee has just joined us. Our professional advisors’ team is also expanding. Our new office will open in June. Simultaneously, we are working on the hotel designs, and planning for getting the retail operators on board. In order to make The Wave a perfect place for living and working, we hope to have the best names in restaurants, shopping facilities and other commercial operations. We plan to start the groundwork for the golf course in the coming months. How much retail space you have planned for? In all, we are aiming at about 5,000 sq. m., but we might go beyond that also. What provisions have you made for power, water and sewage management? The power and water supply will be provided by the government. We are currently in discussions with the government and all utility companies are working together with us to ensure that the required infrastructure is ready on time. A new electricity sub station is going to be built by 2009 to serve our needs. What other major announcements can we expect from The Wave in the second half of the year? We are going to release around 200 villas in autumn. Some will offer direct ocean views. Before the end of the year, we will be releasing about 150 apartments also. Our show apartments are now ready. We will announce more building contracts towards the end of the year for the next phase of housing and infrastructure development. Talking of bookings, what percentage of your customers has taken the mortgage route? Very difficult to say precisely. Going by the feedback from the four banks that are offering mortgages on our properties, I won’t be surprised if this is over 50 per cent. It will be very high among the expatriate buyers. What’s the nature of your tie-ups with banks for mortgage? The four banks involved offer fast-track paper work. Some of them are also offering preferential interest rates depending upon the customer’s profile and requirements. How do you plan to meet the impending challenge from new projects that are expected to become operational? We are one step ahead of the others with our 500 existing customers. The Wave has different unique selling prepositions and there is space for other types of product. It is a very young emerging market with much untouched demand. With more schemes coming up, the market will become bigger. Don’t forget that we are part of GCC and Oman is a big attraction among the GCC countries. Do you foresee some kind of price competition with the onslaught of competition? I don’t think so. On the contrary, prices are going up. Prices have risen by at least 25 per cent in under 18 months. So, all our existing customers have made a good investment.