Although I really do not like Dubai, all the people here that went "yeah right"... think again.. this is real.
The Palm I (Palm Jumairah) was sold flat out in 5 days. The Palm II (Palm Jebel Ali) took a little longer, mainly because it was not advertised as a "famous people only" palm like Palm Jumairah was.
The price of houses on Palm I more than quadrupled over 6 months. To buy a house on either of the Palms, you have to make a down-payment based on the production development, and had to continue to make payments during the coming 4 years (I think) until the production is fully done. The first payment was normally not much higher than 25000 for a 350000 house on Palm I. 5 Months later people sold the RIGHT to the house, meaning you cover whatever was paid up until then (which was only the 25000) and you had to still pay the rest to Nakheel later on based on progress, for as high 100000. Nice profit for 5 months I think.
The landmass of Palm I was finished by beginning 2004, Palm II landmass construction started late 2003 I think. Anyone that does not beleive this, go fly to dubai, I looked at Palm I from the restaurant on top of the Burj al Arab. I stayed in a hotel in Jebal Ali, witnessing the production tankers every day spewing tons of the sand-concrete mixture into the ocean.
Production of Palm III (Palm Deira) began just a few months ago. Palm I already has some of the villas built on it, all the streets are done, all the pipes and power-lines and fibreoptics are already there.
The World is the 4th project of Nakheel, planned right after Palm I was such a huge success. Landmass production started I think something like 1 year ago. Palm I is right next to the Burj Al Arab, once done, accessible via a guarded entrance around half a mile away from another one of the sick projects in Dubai currently, the Jumeirah Marina (not 100% sure who owns this one, its not Jumeirah International or Nakheel though). The Jumeirah Marina is a man-made marina connected to the ocean which has I think 35 sky scrapers built around it. When I was there early 2004 they had 4 already fully built, and were building on another 6 or so.
In general the projects are amaizing, they are pumping out money like crazy. Check out
http://www.nakheel.com/ for some ideas on what only the company that owns the Palms are working on. And these are not fake things and they just claim they are doing them, they were actually building on half of the things that they present there when I was there early 2004.
For people that do not beleive this is real:
http://www.palmsales.ca/palm/status.htm
See Palm I being built.
The World is a bunch of islands, if you look at them from high up it looks like the continents. You can buy your own islands which are each aroudn 2.5 hectars or live on a community island which is I think something like 7 hectars and has multiple properties on it.
Now, if you check out the newest pics of Palm I at
http://www.thepalm.co.ae you will see how close together the properties on Palm I are, I would never want to live there, you sit right on your neighbours lawn (well, or beach I guess). Not really nice.
Its all great ideas, but I would not want to live there.
Oh, for anyone that cares to know... Dubai has a special Internet City where a bunch of big IT companies sit for the region (Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, PeopleSoft and so on), it is linked to the Dubai Free Trade Port which means if you open a company there (which is actually not so difficult) you pay 0% taxes for the next 50 or so years.