So you think you’re a Property Investor, a Guru, the Jedi of Returns, the Master of Capital Appreciation. If you are buying with anything but as much debt as you can then you are still an amateur. Maybe you’re rich, obscenely wealthy, money is nothing to you – if you’re buying with cash you are mere beginner on the property scene, level one, I don’t care how big your portfolio is. Why? One...

So you are thinking about buying, but you are worried you might lose money on the deal. The market is unpredictable in the UAE and you can’t tell when or if it might change. If you have read my articles “How Buying Property Halves Your Rent” and “How Long Do You Have to Stay For Buying to Make Sense” you can see that buying property as an investor or an end user is one of the best investments...

A lot of people in the World own their own homes. Home ownership rates in Europe vary from Germany at 53% all the way to Romania at 96% (the USA is 65% and India is 86%). There are lots of reasons to own the place you live in, some people inherit, some people fall in love with it, others want to make their mark on the property by renovating, some people like to put their money into something they can...

One things was quite apparent at Abu Dhabi Cityscape 2018, that Dubai and Abu Dhabi sent quite different representatives. Representing Abu Dhabi were the Master Developers, Aldar, Tamouh, Baniyas, Al Fahid, Qudra, IMKAN, Maryah Island (Mubadala) and the list goes on. The only real Sub-Developer there was Bloom Holdings who have their own development Bloom Gardens but also two sub-development projects on...

A 99 year lease when you buy property in Abu Dhabi is neither unusual nor something to be concerned about. In Abu Dhabi expatriates (non GCC) acquire 99 year leases when they buy property and this is a concern for some people who only want freehold. It will not be an issue with people from the Common Law legal jurisdictions (like the UK) as these almost always only grant leasehold ownership rights to...

I have been wanting to write an article for a long time about the balance of fees in Abu Dhabi and broadly the UAE. Currently Abu Dhabi has the unfortunate habit of asking tenants to pay brokers 5% when they lease a property through that broker. In most of the world landlords pay brokers for the service of getting them valuable tenants, but here, due to there historically being very few landlords, those...

The Top 100 is made up of the region’s most successful listed and unlisted developers, local real estate consultants, international consultants and—for the first time—Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) The top 40 listed real estate developers have a combined market value of $90.5 billion, and brought in revenues of $18.1 billion in 2016. Forbes Middle East has held a glittering ceremony to...

Ok, they are not all your fault clearly, but tenant and landlord behavior in Abu Dhabi keeps handing business to crappy brokers, and here is why. Why Tenants Create Poor Brokers: Don’t Look At Dubizzle/Propertyfinder - Something people don’t understand about the Abu Dhabi market is that most brokers have access to the whole stock portfolio. Tenants generally go on Dubizzle, see what looks like the...

I have just seen the new law passing the re-instated Abu Dhabi "Rent Cap" and I am a little worried. It looks like on the face of it that Landlords can kick tenants out if they want to raise the rent over 5%. I wrote another LinkedIn Article about this back in 2016 here. A little bit of a history lesson first: in 2006 the new rental law fixed rent rises on property at 7% per year, this was revised in 2010...

Not to be outdone by Aldar coming in and offering two beds for just under 1.1m, TDIC are offering their own promotions for Cityscape. In launching Phase II of their Mamsha development they are offering an unprecedented 2.5% for the reservation deposit. You can now reserve your beachfront one-bed duplex for only AED51,500 with no commission payable. Two, three and four beds also available. With the St...