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Turkey: Jet-set life - Sarah Drane, Purple Cake Factory

Jet-set life

January proved to be a bit of a flight-athon for me - eight legs in total. Two getting me to-and-from my unloved (apart from the spiders) apartment in Marbella to give it some TLC and a carbon footprint-tastic sextet getting me to-and-from Bodrum via Istanbul and London.

Now, flying would be fabulous without a) cabin germs and b) fellow passengers. By the time I hit Istanbul on the return leg I’d ingested 57 varieties of bacteria, virus and protozoa and was reduced to a tissue snuffling dizzy wreck. I also had a bruised left arm from my overweight flight BA0677 neighbour who got through two magazines and elbowed me with each turn of the page – say 280 pages in total, that’s around 140 digs - and I had no escape short of smoking in the toilets to create an emergency landing. O’Leary I’m with you on your ‘fat tax’.

Anyway, I digress. The purpose of the Bodrum trip was a bit of a busman’s holiday, a site visit to a new resort called Horizon Sky on the Bay of Güllük in the company of a notepad-clutching national newspaper journalist. All in all it was a bit of an eye-opener.

We arrived in Bodrum’s International Airport under the cover of darkness and were dropped ten minutes later in Güllük at a rather authentic Turkish yacht ready to take us the 20 minute journey across the Bay to Horizon Sky. Being more of a Sunseeker Manhattan girl myself (preferably the 70) I was slightly ‘fish out of water’ until fortified with strong Turkish coffee served by an equally strong enigmatic Turkish skipper who spoke no English. Night sailing proved to be thoroughly pleasant. And, having been chauffeured from the jetty to the Clubhouse, Horizon Sky proved to be even moreso.

Let me explain, I have worked in property PR for 11 years and promoted a whole host of developments from the good (Linden Homes) to the bad (La Reserva de Deleted for Legal Reasons) to the downright ugly (I’m not that stupid). And, I’ve seen the qualities that developers deem to be reasonable for the price bracket they’re selling in.

Take Bolt Property Group for example. They’re building four million euro plus villas in southern Spain and if a golf ball doesn’t roll perfectly straight across the floor, it’s re-laid until it does. Or take my unloved apartment in Marbella, bought for 190,000 euros and delivered with a snagging inventory as long as Tiger Woods’ Valentine’s Card list including no bedroom door, no bath plugs, missing air-vents, a broken toilet seat and the remnants of a pot noodle in the sink. You get my point; you get what you pay for – apart from in Horizon Sky that is.

Now to be fair, with UK developer Galliard Homes at the helm, I was expecting a degree of British quality you wouldn’t find from a Turkish developer. I was expecting the abundance of swimming pools, the Spa, the gymnasium. But with prices from just £89,891 for a duplex two bedroom apartment of 87m² internal space, I am worried they’ve gone a bit far on the build qualities. I mean how do they make any money?

When I was shown to my duplex, even though it was gone midnight (and several glasses of wine down) I had to spend about an hour just playing. Playing with the gigantic floor-to-ceiling double glazed patio doors that floated across their runners, playing with the soft-close toilet seats and kitchen cabinets that are impossible to slam shut (I tried), playing with the dimmable lighting concealed behind suspended panels, playing with the temperature on the warm air system and then playing on the internet courtesy of my free wi-fi. Is this not a bit too much for £89,891? Galliard could’ve got away with far less - although I am not saying they should have.

As for missing air-vents and bath plugs (for over twice the price!) when the national journalist interviewed recently retired Chartered Surveyor, Terry Cleary, from Dartford in Kent as a case study, he said, “when my one bedroom penthouse completed late last year I paid a visit to Horizon Sky to go through the snagging with the developer. Having spent over 40 years in the construction business I can confirm it was a waste of time as there were no snags to be found.” See, even Terry was confused.

Sarah Drane

Sarah is the proprietor of Purple Cake Factory, an Award-winning company that specializes in real estate, marine and travel PR.

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