Do you own a Hydra Village villa (Abu Dhabi)?

[sandbunny]

Hydra Village Meeting in DXB last week. Some of the points covered:
New contract:
It states that the tenant waives all rights for any reason. I.e. they can do anything and we have no recourse – like not even starting or finishing the product. There is no right of appeal under any circumstances.
Force majeur – includes, financial crisis and the construction company going bust! (not a force of nature which is what fore majeur is all about)
Although their payment schedule has been reduced to 2% rather than 10% the penalty fees can amount to 829% if you take the trouble to calculate it.
The penalties that they are imposing on themselves for late delivery amounts to a maximum of Dhs10,00!
The new contract also states that completion will not be until Q4 of 2011!! Just as recently as last Feb the famous Dr announced that Hydra would be completing some of the villas by June 2009. The original contract said they would be finished by Q1 of 2009!!
Strongly advised us to sign nothing and pay nothing more until we can sort this out.
Masterplan 3 has 208 more houses on it and 15,000 sq ft less greenery!
The price hike on the properties is questionable. It has been suggested that it is the way in which the calculations are done as opposed to an actual increase in size.
They have started some building – there are about 40 villas but none have reached more than the ground floor.
Both Hydra & ADCB were invited to attend – no-one came. One mortage guy from ADCB was going to come but was expressly banned from ADCB from attending.
ADCB has stopped paying any installments – they have nothing to safeguard their money because nothing is being built.
Hydra has 11 properties in UAE, and others in Mexico and Tripoli. It is thought that they had used all of the funds the Hydra people have put in to finance these other projects. The general opinion is that they are strapped for cash.
For all of these projects that are going on they have just 100 people working for them!! Apparently they have increased that recently to 150.
In any event, the objective of the whole group is not to bad mouth or bring Hydra down. All they want to do is have a fair contract and for the building process to be linked to the payment schedule.
There were a lot of very good suggestions coming from the group.
There are a total of 189 people in the group and it is growing every day. What was agreed is that
· An independent lawyer be instructed
· An independent architect be instructed to help calculate the size differential.

Although the group consisted of both of many different professions everyone agree that we should instruct independently of the group.
Everyone present gave Dhs200 as a starter to cover fees and all the other members will be asked to do the same. Anyone who does not contribute will not receive any info. (that is Dhs200 per property)
I think we should try and encourage people to join as that is the only way we will get a fair deal.
It was discussed that maybe someone should talk to the main man as I am sure he has no idea what is going on. I’ll talk to you about that later.
Anyway, I think we should, in a very discreet way, get people to join the group. Their address is [email protected]
All agreed we did not want to go down the litigation route – we just wanted to put sufficient pressure on them to listen to us and to be fair.
The meeting lasted 3 hours but it was 3 hours well spent.