I just got back from a business trip + holiday in Egypt and I *gots *some questions. For the record; I spent 7 days in Cairo and then flew to Hurghada for a few days. One day, I took a day-trip/tour from Hurghada to Luxor to visit some of the ancient treasures of Thebes.
First Q: Why all the unfinished buildings? They are ubiquitous in Cairo and I saw them in most all the villages, too. The answer I got while there was that the building’s owners pay no taxes until the building is finished, but that doesn’t satisfy me. The buildings aren’t just a few shingles and some paint from completion. There are entire neighborhoods of barely-begun (but seemingly abandoned) structures. Some example photos here.
Second Q: On the ~4-hour road-trip from Hurghada to Luxor, my driver told me to tell anyone who asked that I was English. He didn’t want anyone on the road to know I was an American. Each time we passed through a checkpoint, the guards would peer into the car to see me, exchange the word “englisi” with the driver, and then wave us free to proceed down the road. I received a somewhat-satisfying answer to that question while in-country, but there are nuances that remain unexplained.
Q1. When I was working in Egypt a few years ago I noticed the same thing you did and asked the question to the local who was taking care of me while I was there. He mentioned the tax issue, which I believe is real, but also said that many houses and apartment buildings are built using cash, meaning that the landowner saves up some money and starts construction, then runs out of money, and then gets some more money and continues construction. It seems that they don’t go to their local bank to borrow say $500,000 to build a structure, they build it themselves over a long period of time. They don’t seem to be in any hurry.
Q2. I have no idea, but my guess is that if that you were identified as as American there would be more hassle for everyone involved. When I was working in Saudi Arabia I was told to identify as a Canadian instead of an American, although I clearly had a US passport. Again, I think it made things simpler for my handlers, but it’s hard to believe it really makes that much difference…
My understanding from when i visited is that the government gives grants and tax credits as buildings reach agreed stages of construction and at some point these are worth more than the cost of building,i assume once a building is completed taxes fall due on it
One point our guide told us was the tax issue. If the building is complete, a tax needs to be paid.
Another point is that even simple 1 or 2 story buildings in the villages might be incomplete. For these, it may also be that the family built them and expects their children to occupy future floors when they are built.
Not sure about the road between Red Sea and Luxor, but in Sinai there were “bandit” or “militant” groups (i.e. petty criminals) who knew threatening foreigners was a quick way to apply leverage or get a ransom or something. We had to travel from Sharm to St. Catherines by convoy with a police escort fo part of the way.
Obviously, Americans are more important than English. Also, due to heavy US support for Israel, Americans are seen less as friends than English. Could be worse - every time we told people we were Canadian there, they replied “Canada? Ah… Canada Dry!” Next time I go back, I want to take a t-shirt with the Canada Dry logo on it.
Banks in Muslim countries are not allowed to charge interest on loans.
So they have to use various loopholes to get around this (fees, etc.) Thus loans are a lot harder to get in Muslim areas.
When I was in Luxor around 20 years ago a lot of the houses seemed not to have roofs. I enquired why all these buildings were unfinished and was told that they were finished, they just didn’t need roofs as it hardly ever rained.
In another discussion with our guide in the Sinai - we were passed by a long convoy of assorted somewhat lightly used vehicles. The guide suggested they were used cars from Jordan, which was fairly well off, going to Libya (before things went seriously downhill in the last year). It was cheaper than transport by ship to hire a bunch of drivers, take them by ferry around Eilat, and then through the Sinai and across the Mediterranean coast to Libya.
This degenerated into a discussion of money and prices. Cars cost a lot more in Egypt to regulate congestion and pollution (unsuccessfully, it seems) in Cairo and Alexandria. But the guide mentioned that unlike North America, the typical middle-class working stiff did not use banks, does not have a bank account, credit cards, etc. Many people live paycheque to paycheque, and most things are bought with cash. Much of the economy runs on cash, and many family groups “pull together”. People live at home with their parents and grandparents in large housing; families too tend to be large. Cairo is miles of tenement apartments up to 10 stories tall (Often unfinished), not a lot of pretty suburbs.
Interestingly, my general impression is that most buildings are built with “rule of thumb” rather than carefully engineered designs. I’m amazed that we don’t have more incidents in the third world like the factory collapse in Bangladesh. (Which, if you recall, had its causes in additional floors added to the original building, plus crappy cement quality).
Another bonus for Egypt and the Cairo area is that it rarely rains, so there is no need for a fully sealed and protected roof; the top floor can be left open an unfinished without worrying about water damage to the floors below.
(edit - oops, Dahu beat me to it)
Yes! The same thing happened to me everywhere in Egypt, though I am actually Canadian. I was also told the same thing about property taxed only applying to “finished” buildings.
I’ve heard the property tax story in other places. That may be a factor, but I think a larger factor, especially when it comes to housing, is that people build in stages as they get money.
It’s also common, at least in other places, for people living abroad to finance the construction of a house back home, which they don’t expect to occupy any time soon. They send money as they can, and construction happens in spurts.
What’s notable about the earlier thread is that people chimed in with similar observations (and similar reasons given) from many areas all around the Middle East, all around the Mediterranean, and even some other places around the world.
That link was great; practically identical to this one with some good info. I had faith in the tax explanation, and it’s good to get more of the story from you guys.
The family approach makes sense, and I can apply that to the more-modest structures that I saw in the smaller cities and towns. I could often tell that sections of those were inhabited.
But I still beg the question about those areas of apartment/office buildings in Cairo. They are such large expanses of land/buildings that it seems to leave-behind the “family home” reasoning. There were acres (hectares) of these buildings that were empty.
I assume that even (the Egyptian equivalent of) corporations build their investments piecemeal like that?
If you were expecting peaky tops that’s true for all the Mediterranean area. Houses traditionally end on a terrace, not a peaked roof, and even when there are peaked roofs they often are a lot flatter than in other places with more rainfall. There are places with high annual rainfall (Italy’s is surprisingly high), but it tends to be in the form of storms: so long as the terrace slopes slightly towards a hole in its surrounding wall, it’ll drain and be dry within minutes of the outpour stopping.
You also seeing the result of economic changes. From 2004-2009, Egypt had a growth rate of 8%. In developing countries, that kind of growth rate is associated with a lot of new construction. The economy tanked with the 2011 revolution, and chances a lot of that construction was abandon. I’d also chance that some optimists also started projects after the revolution, but misjudged the direction the economy was going and couldn’t sustain them.
It’s also fairly common in Arab-Israeli towns, which makes me think that it’s mostly a cultural thing - the Israeli economy and legal system being essentially Western.
I saw quite a few unfinished buildings in London in 2007-2009 (although much less in 2012 when I was back last).
I think houses might be explainable for cultural reasons but not so commercial buildings, money being the most probable cause there. Pictures in the OP seems to be of commercial buildings.
Incidentally, after 2005 Earthquake, there were lost of buildings in N Pakistan which remained unfinished for years because if new building regulations. Most are finished now.
I have a photo of an unfinished building along the Cairo-Alexandria highway, where the front pillars of the building have been broken at ground level, causing all 4 floors to break in the middle and collapse. Also saw a military-escorted collection of front-end loaders during a road-trip to Abydos and Dendera. The guide said they were going to demolish illegal construction.
Apparently after the revolution, the police sort of stayed in their barracks. (The locals had a very negative opinion of police) People took advantage of this to build illegally - no permits, and ignoring the laws on converting farmland to buildings. about a year after the Arab Spring, they authorities had decided enough was enough and started cracking down.
(There were speed bumps every so often along the highway, to indicate villages and microbus stops. On the road trip to Abydos, we went past one spot, the road was fine. By the time we returned a few hours later, someone had dug a one-foot wide hole in the asphalt across the highway to create their own home-made speed bump, presumably to slow the people speeding past their house. Construction is a lot more “ad-hoc” over there.)
Along the countryside, I did see a lot more one and two-story houses with the same unfinished roofs, and even one-half finished second floor, the other half treated as a terrace. As for the “build as you get more money”, that was not uncommon in the rural areas outside Toronto years ago too - the old ramshackle house next to a new building, or people living in a new house with no siding. It’s a common process for people who cannot or don’t want to put themselves in debt, all over the world.