Couldn’t really sleep tonight… so just hung around the hotel lobby to research a little more on Pakistan property. Read a worrisome piece of news:
Rs450b real estate scam leaves MQM red-faced
When I saw the owner of the hotel, just thought of clarifying it with him. Wanted to clarify:
3,281 eligibility certificates for government properties and accommodations in Karachi
What were these eligibility certificates? Did it had anything to do with the DHA properties? If so, this will definitely have an adverse impact on the DHA properties in the future.
Anyway to cut the story short, these housings are of a different type. I think it will dampen investor sentiments for the Pakistan housing market, but it will not be isolated at the DHA. Hmmm.. so no urgent need to invest so fast.
Anyway, just realised that the owner of the hotel is Dr Tariq Malik. He holds a PHD. That certainly came as a surprise to me. Thought PHDs belong to the universities. Did not really expect to see them owning hotels, etc…. Anyway Dr Tariq Malik has a PHD in urban planning… and after explaining to me the news started to elaborate more on the DHA scheme.
For the DHA, the government actually takes undeveloped land from the owners and return them a quarter of the land after development. For the remaining part of the land, a portion is set aside for military housing and another portion is set aside for the private commercial market.
I was debating hard on whether to rent a place at DHA or at a central office in Gulberg. Dr Malik feels that DHA will be a bad choice as it takes an hour to get there for the normal employees. He once stayed at DHA, but gave up his property after it consumed an hour of traveling time for him to get to his hotel. I guess this settles it. If a car owner finds it toublesome to get to work from DHA, I can imagine how my poor employees will feel. This means that my office will be in Gulberg Main Boulevard!
Took another picture with Rehan – Dr Malik’s son
