What's Happening With The Dorsett Place Waterfront?

I posted extensively about this project here, here and the latest was here. Many of us are vested in this project including myself. So, I'll just update everyone about what I know.

Firstly, what everybody knows, there is a court case between the local council MPSJ and the developer, Mayland. The verdict is still unknown but both sides claim to have a strong case, naturally....

But let us look at the scenarios:

1. If MPSJ wins the case, then Mayland will either have to close the project and refund all buyers or proceed and re-market with a revised plan. The latter is good for existing buyers as it means Mayland have to provide sufficient car parks and reduce the density. However, this will greatly impact the developer's margins so it's unlikely to happen.

2. Even if Mayland wins the case, MPSJ and the state government still has some say about the local by-laws. At the least this will affect the project delivery time schedule. Buyers and Mayland will both suffer - buyers will have to bear interests from the 5th year onwards and with MPSJ very likely to appeal the case, this will definitely drag the project beyond the 5th or even 6th year.

So, as you can see from both scenarios above, the project is as good as dud. Mayland is actually allowing buyers to withdraw and they are providing a full refund of the RM5,000 booking fee. Unfortunately for some buyers, they have gone on and signed loan agreements with financiers, hence they have paid legal fees as well as stamp duties which amounts to about 1% of the purchase price. This cost, sad to say will be the buyers' loss.

As soon as I smelt trouble, I held back on my loan agreement with Hong Leong bank. In fact the loan agent was very aggressive in trying to get me to sign. I am glad I didn't.