JEDDAH: The Ministry of Housing has entered into an agreement with developers participating in the Eastern Province Housing Exhibition, which will require developers to sell 50 percent of the projects presented at the event.
Eight developers are participating in the 40-day exhibition, which started last Sunday. A total of 5,000 housing units and apartments in the north and south of the province near the Riyadh–Dammam road are being marketed at the expo.
Until Thursday, participating companies had finalized only 20 contracts, out of a total of 43,000 applicants who expressed interesting in purchasing the units on the Ministry of Housing’s online portal.
Sources attributed the low turnout to the poor timing as the exhibition coincided with the beginning of summer vacation and Ramadan.
They said companies participating in the exhibition are concerned about the low attendance and weak media publicity about the exhibition, as well as the low number of messages broadcasted by the Ministry of Housing to beneficiaries.
He said developers have suffered heavy losses due to costs associated with submitting the tender to the ministry, rent for the exhibition and costs of marketing and advertising.
Some developers are considering presenting an official request to the Minister of Housing to extend the exhibition period by one month.
Abdulrahman Al-Arifi, general manager of one of the participating firms, has also sought infensification of publicity campaign.
He said his company has signed a few contracts compared to the number of contracts signed during the Madinah Housing Exhibition, where developers finalized about 60 contracts on a daily basis.
He said the ministry has not been sending enough text messages to the beneficiaries, and had been sending only 100 messages per day due to concerns about congestion, but only about 40 people attend the exhibition between 10 a.m. and 10 pm.
Radan Al-Duweish, CEO of another participating developer marketing 880 apartments on Riyadh–Dammam road, said more than 145,000 applications have been submitted for apartments in Dammam, Khobar, Qatif, Jubail, Ras Tanura and Abqaiq, while supply is only about 5,000 apartments.
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