As much as UAE residents love their life in the Emirates, they also enjoy complaining. Trawl any social media platform and you will find numerous complaints about bad real estate brokers. But are they really any worse than other professionals in the country? Here are a few reasons why brokers get such a bad rep: How fees are paid In most parts of the world, brokers help landlords rent out or sell their...
The property market is a source of fascination for both residents and international investors As soon as someone finds out I work in real estate in the UAE they invariably ask how the market is doing. "Is it up, down, when is it going to change direction, is now the right time to invest?" they will ask along with many more questions. I never received this level of interest when I was a lawyer. People...
Off-plan residential transactions in Dubai for the first six months of 2018 were down 20 per cent from last year during the same period, according to GCP-Reidin. On the ready property side, sales in the first six months of the year held up well, with an increase of around about 6 per cent year-on-year. Does this mark the end of off-plan sales and a switch back to ready units? Time will tell, but what is...
Lots of residents own their cars in the UAE but far fewer own their houses. Undoubtedly, houses are more expensive than cars so I will not address my thoughts to the people who simply cannot afford a down payment on their own home, but more to those who have the deposit, own a car but do not own their house. On the face of it cars and houses occupy very similar places in our lives. They are both...
The sales market has been buoyant in the off-plan sector but troubled in the secondary market for some time now. Prices have been sliding since 2015 due to the oil price crash and resulting issues around the Gulf. However, oil is at a four-year high hovering above $75 a barrel and there is much talk of a pick-up in government spending, not just here in the UAE but across the Gulf. It is just a matter of...
Since 2015 the Abu Dhabi Real Estate Market has had a tough time. The fall in the price of oil meant that, unlike the rest of the world who are now in their ninth year of recovery from the 2008 crash, we had a serious “double-dip”. The resulting government spending cutbacks, benefits reductions and job losses in 2016 lead to vacancies across the board and sales and rental prices dropped. 2017 was...
When you are an investor there are a lot of things you can put your money into. Stocks and shares, funds, art, bitcoin, crowdfunding, there is a pretty long list. Property is always high on that list. High net worth individuals will be told by financial advisors that they should invest a certain amount of their wealth into real estate, but why?...
A lot of people say to me “I’m only going to be here for a few years, surely buying doesn’t make sense”? But what is the actual truth? If you have read my articles “Why is Property Such a Good Investment” and “How Buying Property Halves Your Rent” then you will understand what a great investment property is, but over what time period does it make sense to invest. One approach, and I...
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...
