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BERMUDA | RSS PODCAST

Condos not sold

August 11, 2011Dear Sir,I was somewhat amused to see that the developer of Grand Atlantic (ie, the condos on top of the cliff in Warwick) is attempting to measure success by the number of phone enquiries (allegedly hundreds) as opposed to actual sales (zero). There are a lot of people out there, especially ones who currently own condos, that will be competing with Grand Atlantic, who are concerned Government has mistaken the concept of “affordable housing” with flooding the market with excess supply (let's not forget that there are a substantial number of units in the St David's development that have not yet been occupied and other projects planned). No one will disagree with the concept of affordable housing but excess supply will have a crippling effect on an already distressed real estate market; let's hope we are all proven wrong.I also see that the same developer is already making excuses for a lack of a hotel. Yes, he listed some concerns, but those issues have existed since before the project was started so you can't give them much weight. Again, there are a lot of people out there who believe there was never any serious focus on the hotel/tourism aspects and like too many other recent projects this was simply a real estate play.That leaves me with one more question, if all of the condos are not sold who is left holding the bag, the developer or the taxpayer?KENT SMITH