A housing project featuring numerous identical homes designed to mimic the grandeur of mansions is now a deserted ghost town.
Located in Turkey, the Burj Al Babas housing development contains 732 homes, each modeled to resemble the opulent architecture of a European château. These homes were not inexpensive, with prices ranging from $370,000 to $530,000 each.
The Sarot Group was responsible for this ill-fated venture of transforming a 250-acre area into a fantasy land. The construction commenced in 2014, with an investment of $200,000,000, aiming to complete the entire complex within four years.
Now, it presents an unsettling image, with lines of identical white mini mansions topped with dark spires. From a distance, it resembles a scene from a classic Disney fairytale, perhaps akin to Beauty and the Beast.
Unfortunately, those who invested in these rows of unfinished castles didn’t find their fairy tale ending.
The deserted village appears haunting from afar.
This site is situated near the historic town of Mudurnu in northern Turkey, approximately a two-hour drive from the Black Sea.
By 2018, the sales began to decline, and the developers were declared bankrupt before the project could be finished, resulting in around 530 partially constructed homes remaining on the site.
There were ambitions to include a shopping center, a waterpark complete with slides and streams, as well as indoor pools, baths, and saunas.
In 2018, Mehmet Emin Yerdelen, the chairman of Sarot Properties Group, attributed the failure to buyers who did not complete payments for their purchased homes.
“We couldn’t get about $7.5 million (£5,585,662) receivables for the villas we have sold to Gulf countries,” he explained to Hurriyet Daily News.
“We applied for bankruptcy protection but the court ruled for bankruptcy. We will appeal the ruling.”
He remained optimistic that bankruptcy wouldn’t mark the end of the development, noting: “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.”
“We think that we will overcome the crisis in four or five months. We have been planning to open the premises partly in 2019.”
However, as reported by Conde Nast Traveller in 2022, none of the castles are complete, and 587 remain half-finished.
Due to the unfinished nature of the buildings, no one is able to reside in Burj Al Babas.