Featured Image Credit: ADEM ALTAN/Getty/CHRIS MCGRATH/Getty
Topics: Property, Disney, World News
Gregory Robinson
Topics: Property, Disney, World News
A residential development with hundreds of identical homes styled after mansions is now an abandoned ghost town.
The Burj Al Babas housing development in Turkey consists of 732 homes that were each inspired to resemble the lavish designs of a European château. The homes did not come cheap either, as they were on sale for between $370,000-$530,000 each.
The Sarot Group was behind the doomed project of turning the 250-acre site into a magical land. Construction began in 2014 and cost $200,000,000, and the entire housing complex was intended to be completed in four years.
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It’s now an eerie sight to behold, with rows of uniform white mini mansions with dark spires. From afar it looks like something out of a classic Disney fairytale, Beauty and the Beast perhaps.
But no one who invested money in one of these rows of incomplete castles has managed to have a happy ending.
From afar, the empty village looks chilling.
The site is located close to the historic town of Mudurnu in the north of the country, roughly a two-hour drive from the Black Sea.
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But by 2018, sales started to drop and the developers behind the complex were declared bankrupt before it had been completed, meaning that around 530 partially built homes are now left on the land.
There were plans to include a shopping mall, a waterpark, complete with slides and streams, as well as indoor pools, baths, and saunas.
Speaking in 2018 about the the project, Mehmet Emin Yerdelen, chairman of Sarot Properties Group, blamed the buyers who refused to pay for the homes they purchased.
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"We couldn't get about $7.5 million (£5,585,662) receivables for the villas we have sold to Gulf countries,” he told Hurriyet Daily News.
"We applied for bankruptcy protection but the court ruled for bankruptcy. We will appeal the ruling."
He seemed hopeful that the bankruptcy wasn't the end of the complex, adding: "The total value of the project is about $200 million.
"We still have 250 villas completed and ready to go on sale. Selling only 100 of them would be enough to pay off the debts and complete the project.
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"We think that we will overcome the crisis in four or five months. We have been planning to open the premises partly in 2019."
But as of 2022 none of the castles are finished, and 587 are half-built, Conde Nast Traveller reports.
And because of the unfinished buildings, nobody is able to live in Burj Al Babas.