Forest City would not be an option for me as a location. I don’t think living with only Chinese neighbors is very tempting. The images from Forest City are also either very cheesy or extremely off-putting. The green skyscraper world looks wonderful with blue skies and sunshine. But a US reporter from Business.com describes his impressions of the site visit like a visit to the Planet of the Apes. Dilapidated buildings, hardly any people, empty shopping centers, signs on the beach warning against swimming in the sea. And the report also raises doubts about the statics of residential towers built into the ocean sand on artificial islands. However, the builders claim that they have complied with all regulations.
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But perhaps you have to think more long-term: there were also empty real estate projects in the Docklands in London around the turn of the millennium. Then the London financial center experienced a boom and all the offices and apartments were rented out at high prices. The only question is whether the apartments that have been built in Malaysia are built so solidly that they can last for years until they are needed. An acquaintance who lived in Singapore for a long time doubts this. “After ten years you can forget about the apartments and the pipes, there is not as much construction as here,” she says. An unstable residential tower would be more of a nightmare than a dream property. And the price of the property would no longer be cheap if the remaining useful life were to shrink to ten years. Then you could get an apartment on the Mediterranean cheaper again – but it might also have similar problems as in Malaysia.