hey everyone,

I'm a Personal Trainer from Hungary who wants to relocate to Dubai. As I was reading the threads I found that you need to pay UPFRONT 1 years of rental!?! that sounds mental .. especially for a pt who gets money via clients and no PT starts fresh in a gym let alone in a new country with full clientele so my question is can you stay at airbnb while you are working and putting the money together? Also how's it for couple who are engaged but not married yet?
Has anyone done this before?

I imagine, like myself most people came with savings I certainly wouldn't move to a foreign country without a substantial amount of cash behind me. Yes you can use an air b n b and whilst cohabiting is illegal many do it, just don't pee anyone off who could report you.

I bought minimal money into the country to start up. It is also what I advise others to do - money only flows one way in expat life: out of the host country.

As for Air BnB - my mate rents a room in a 2-bed Air BnB on a long term basis. It's great, far cheaper than a serviced apartment and most of the time the second room isn't occupied. It also means you get different flat mates on a fairly regular basis so if you don't like one it doesn't matter, they will soon go.

Mix bag of guests though - so far, he has shared with a couple of middle-aged dutch women on holiday, an american prostitute, a couple of professionals settling in and looking for their long-term housing and a Pakistani girl on holiday that he ended up sleeping with.

Sounds quite fun!

Certainly works for him. He treats it like his own place and has his chef come along and cook a couple of times a week too.

The only guest that he complained about was the american, he liked the eye candy at first but her overall fakeness just annoyed him. The final straw was when he came home one evening to find her tucking into his lentils the chef had made.

Yeah, of course I'm saving up but 1 yr contract is a big commitment and money to start up with. If I could save up that much money in the short term I wouldn't be looking to relocate to dubai

thanks, the long term plan of course is to rent our own apt. but its good to know that air bnb works also

We pay one cheque.

EDIT: We probably wouldn't if we moved somewhere else but the thought of moving house fills me with such dread that it's not gonna happen.

Me too.

I've never paid one cheque in Dubai (8 years). I've always pushed the same level of discount over 2/3 cheques vs. 1. Currently on 4 but that's because the landlord refused to reduce the rent on renewal (I was outside the cancellation period) so I increased the cheques just to annoy him.

Me neither 12 years here and all bar one LL ( he did monthly) all have been 4 cheques