One may find several questionable business practices in Bahria Town project but Malik Riaz, the Chairman of Bahria Town, knows how to handle these risks and maintain reputation as well. Zameen’s data reveals that the project recovered within months due to heavy blitz of advertising by shaking off the affect of Arsalan Iftikhar scandal.
According to a report sanctioned by Zameen, corruption allegations against Malik Riaz and Arsalan Iftikhar have highlighted many questionable business practices of the company. While people temporarily stayed away from Bahria Town Lahore properties on Zameen, but it did not have a measurable impact on its property prices. According to our data, the interest of people in Bahria Town Prices was steadily rising during the first five months of 2012. However, as the Supreme Court began hearings into the corruption allegations in June, interest plunged down.
The traffic volume was dropped from 5.48 percent to 4.53 percent within one month. Though the difference is not huge but it means thousands and thousands of people moved away from Bahria Town as a result of the controversy. The unique searches also dropped down by 23%. However, the most interesting thing is that prices in Lahore Bahria Town remained relatively steady and recovered strongly after the impact of the scandal faded away.
Now interest in Bahria Town properties appears to have also crossed its pre-scandal peak touching 6.74% of total searches on Zameen in October. It indicates that people’s interest is suddenly increased and is almost twice as much as the setback it suffered in July. Most of the experts claim that it is the result of a massive advertisement campaign that Bahria Town launched at the height of the scandal.
Whether one likes it or not but the truth is that it appeared to have worked. Prices of Bahria Town Lahore properties are up by 10.6 percent between May and August this year.
