The crisis attains significance as it erupts at a time when investors and landlords of these apartments look forward to their lucrative business in the annual summer vacation, which is around the corner. The Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (SCTA) has shut down these apartments for want of operational licenses. The municipality refused to give licenses following the landlords’ failure to fulfill the specifications with regard to parking space for each apartment or residential unit at the building, Al-Madinah daily reported. A committee comprising representatives of the SCTA, Jeddah Municipality and Civil Defense Department has served the closure notice to these apartments.

According to the municipality regulations, each furnished residential apartment is required to have separate parking space. The landlords, however, point out that the municipality’s specifications are contrary to those of the SCTA, which state that furnished apartments must have at least 50 percent of parking spaces.

“The municipality is imposing this condition without giving us any chance to get out of the crisis. We are not in a position to create additional parking space at the existing furnished apartments before the forthcoming summer vacation, in which we can earn huge revenues compared with other seasons of the year. The closure of apartments would incur us heavy losses,” said a spokesman for the landlords while urging the authorities concerned to give them a grace period of at least one year to fulfill the required specifications and conditions. 

Moreover, some landlords and investors in the furnished apartment sector drew attention to the fact that they had so far not received the compensation for the losses caused by the Jeddah floods. “The committee concerned has so far not disbursed compensation to us following our failure to produce the necessary license document from the municipality and the SCTA,” the spokesman said.

Referring to the issue, Bashir Najm, director general for license and commercial monitoring at Jeddah Municipality, reiterated that there would not be any concession to landlords and investors of furnished apartments with regard to the parking area.

He said the municipality had taken the decision following a barrage of complaints from the citizens living in the neighborhoods of those apartments. “Their main complaint was that the tenants of furnished apartments occupied the parking areas designated for them along the streets or in front of their residential buildings. Hence, we have directed all the branch municipalities in the region to strictly implement the directive with regard to parking space while issuing operation license to furnished apartments,” he explained.

Commenting on the issue, Muhammad Al-Amri, executive director of the SCTA branch in the Makkah region, said that normally it was not the business of the Commission to solve problems between the municipality and landlords. He repeated the SCTA specifications of 50 percent space for the parking.

“The SCTA would complete the licensing procedures within half an hour if the applicant submitted the form in the unified pattern fulfilling all the specifications approved by the SCTA, municipality and the Civil Defense. However, the SCTA chief is currently involved in addressing this problem,” he said while hoping that the issue would have an amicable solution before the start of the impending summer vacation.