busybee2

ok ok ok, his money, i only have the bank card and spend it....

AnotherWorld

Whats Reem island like? I left in 2009. What are apartment prices like?

busybee2

apparently they are very very small. there is a road there now. and waitrose, but anything else nah not much. obviously quite close to town.

csdf

Waitrose is pretty damn good, by the way. Best supermarket in Abu Dhabi, except there's no pork counter.

Mischief Queen

Waitrose on Reem has a big pork room...

al dente

If you are blind

They have very little choice of packaged sliced bread though, which is irritating. Lots of lovely fresh stuff but the bloody kids are too common for that.

flares

did you make a special trip to take these snaps?

Fossildog

Still stubbornly high. Minimum seems to be 75k for a very small 1 bedroom, studios at 60k. Loads of availability and yet the correlation between prices and vacancies just does not seem to occur to anyone. If I was a landlord I would rather have full occupancy at 50k a unit than 25% occupancy at 80k a unit. I am actively looking for a place and all I can see is that rents seem to be creeping up on empty buildings with more availability coming on the market all the time. Makes you understand the decisions to pay rent for government employees only to live in AD and needing a tenancy contract for visa renewal.

Just seems like a crazy market out here. One or two payments for your yearly rental costs does not help with a functioning market. The concept of direct debits does not seem to have reached here yet. There is a real market here for a landlord who would take monthly payments by direct debit for his property. Instead all the risk is pushed onto the tenant. Pay one cheque for your accommodation and get 'released' from work the day after.

busybee2

yep but thats the way it works here.... like or lump it.

AnotherWorld

Well its a little bit better than 2008. There were almost no vacancies and the cheapest that was liveable for a westerner was 70k. The last place I lived in was a 1 bedroom in a villa somewhere around 25th street for about 115k.

Whats a decent sized 2 bedroom cost not too far out of town?

al dente

You can get a 3 bedder in an older building on 11th/ 26th for 180k.

Fossildog

You can get a 2 bed villa in Al Reef for 80-90k. Trouble is it is in Al Reef.

Itinerant_Expat

We are organising the move to AD currently and I've a question regarding books and DVDs. Is there anything specifically banned by the UAE government? We dont have any books by Rushdie but we do have some books, DVDs with a bit of sex and violence.

Should we just leave these behind?

Bahtatboy

If customs are consistent with what's broadcast on the channels here, there shouldn't be any problem with a bit of rumpy pumpy. They haven't got a clue about responsible broadcasting. I don't know of anyone getting into trouble with main-stream movies at customs, but they won't take kindly to Debbie Does Dallas. Violence is perfectly acceptable.

Millhouse

I love the satellite TV- 8am - The Tweenies, 8.20am - The Exorcist

Something for all the family...