JEDDAH, 3 August 2007 — With the proliferation of cars in the city, a new rage, not road rage, is coming out over good parking spaces. The problem of finding parking space near one’s house in the city is growing, but has also triggered many fights.

Things have come to such a point that it’s considered part of the search of an ideal apartment rental.

“Some people ask about parking space first even before they ask about the annual rent when they go in search of a rental,” said a Jeddah-based real estate agent who didn’t want his name published.

Many Jeddah buildings do not have a parking space for each apartment available. This problem is exacerbated if the apartment building is located on a narrow street.

Some tenants escalate the parking war to a new level by placing threatening signs on their parking space. Signs saying “park your car here at your own risk” or “imagine driving your car on two wheels only” can be seen.

In a narrow street in Al-Rawda district in Jeddah, we met with Abu Saleh, a Saudi resident in one of the apartment buildings. “These old buildings are built with no planning for parking space,” he said. “It is a major headache in our building. There are only five parking spaces available for six tenants; three of them have two cars apiece. The same problem exists with at least three buildings on the same street. So the situation is a war for a space to park your car in not only between tenants of other buildings but also among tenants from the same building.”

Suleiman Al-Amoudi, resident of Al-Salamah district, said: “The problem is not with the residents themselves but with residents of neighboring apartment buildings. One resident from a neighboring building decided to travel to Egypt. Since he had one parking space in his apartment building and two cars, he decided to park his second car near our building. “This made many in our building angry at this reckless act. They decided to teach him a lesson. They took his tires out and placed the car on bricks. When the man returned after one month he was shocked to see his car parked sans wheels and complained to the police about us when he learned that we were the culprits.

“The police asked all of us to settle the issue. At the end we gave him back the tires under the promise that he would not park again.”

A real estate businessman, Basem Al-Ghamdi, said that most of the new buildings in Jeddah are designed in a way to provide parking spaces at the ground level, unlike the old buildings. Though the rents are high in these apartments, tenants enter into an agreement quickly for these apartments, adding: “There are beautiful apartments at cheap price but they are not desired simply because there are no parking places available. Many people complain about this and have left the apartment after renting for six months.”

Many people, who cannot park near the building, have taken to parking elsewhere. This has led to some altercations. Also residents of apartments near shopping malls and cafes have a perennial problem of fighting for their parking space.

It is all the more problematic with these transient parkers for the owner just uses space to do his bit with callous regard for the tenant. According to an expat, who lives near a café, people who want to spend their hours leisurely smoking a sheesha park at any space available near the café and stroll back after hours of leisure and just drive off. “It has become a veritable cat and mouse game for tenants of my building. There are six cars in the building and six available spaces,” said the expat. “Each one of us warns each other (by mobile) of space availability in the hope of blocking out these transient parkers.”

The parking rage has reached such levels that some of the apartment building owners are employing guards to watch the parking spaces, while others simply chain the place to prevent people from coming.