lovely_lyn

my husband has just been offered a job in Dubai. Company will pay for housing and utilities. Housing to the value of DHS110.000. what sort of place can we expect to get for that.
Thanks in advance.

Truth Speak

Hello Lyn, welcome to the forum.

110K will get you a reasonable 3 bed villa or apartment or a modest 4 bed. If you're prepared toshop around you'll fnd a good spot.

FYI 110K is a good housing allowance for an expat here.

Alternatively it would pay a decent mortgage and u could buy somewhere nice

HAve a look through the FAQs. Some of the prices are out of date as rents are rising at 30% per annum. Get hubby to index link the rent then you'll be laughing. (5% extra on rent for municipality tax...aka community charge or the likes)

Take care
TS

lovely_lyn

Thank you so much for replying to me, that helps a lot.

TA5

I am curious where you get your info on 30%, seeing that I know nobody here whose rent rose more than 5%.

BurpusMe

Some of the apartments I looked at in October 2004 were 45k at the time and are now in the mid 60k's. That's >30% -- and that wasn't even a whole year ago. :scared:

On the upside, there are dozens of new buildings going up in the Barsha/Marina area which will flood the market, and likely stabilize it. Or maybe UAE will begin taxing; become unlivable; get deserted. Who's to say?

Heart of gold

You dont know that many ppl then

Truth Speak

Lol......... last september our rent was raised from 100k to 120k after only one year. So in October i reserved an apartment at the Marooj at 92K. Then in Jan the rent was raised to 100K (??) when we signed the contract. so if u add these up thats 28k for me in less than a year.

Alot of one bed places were doubled in Sharjah

The Mariners not cheap though..........5% is pretty impressive...does that include service charge.

TA5

No, I must just know savvy people that know how to deal with the typical gung-ho dubai landlord.

My rent is all-inclusive.

W10

You also live in a building with low occupancy don't you?

That kind of helps.

TA5

Yes, very low occupancy, but what i'm saying is not all rents are increasing, and frankly, murooj is the worst example as it is the same as having all the villas in jumeirah or the marina owned by one person that could set the rent, the advantage in anywhere but murooj is that you can put competition between landlords, and trust me, demand is way below supply right now, in higher end properties it is still a renters market, believe it or not (for proof, take a look at 'for rent' sections of gulf news for villas and apt's, there are min 3-4 available of each type of apt, villa, etc. available right now).

Oh, another hint, if you really want a certain property, throw a 'wanted ad' in the paper, with the property wanted and max rent. Then you skip through the negotiation period when someone calls to offer.

Jeeper

Yeah - how come it's such low occupancy?
Is it all people investing but not wanting the hassle of tenants or something?
or is it that the place is just sh.ite?

I've never been there BTW.

TA5

Emaar sold entire chunks (5-10 floors) the single individual investors. You can tell because in some buildings, there are entire sections of the building with no lights on at night.
Alot of the rest is for rent, there just isn't enough demand, even for 7 completed buildings in the marina. Wait until the other 120 buildings are completed, it will be 1 building for each marina resident.

W10

It also still looks a bit crap with all the building work going on all around it.

Think yourself lucky the occupancy rates will stay low. If they were high, you'd never get through I5 onto the SZR

Border Reiver

Well, there aren't too many places in Dubai that aren't a building site at the moment. I5 will get worse before it gets better as the start "improving" it over the next 20 months, but there is the option of Beach Road and you can now get out of the South end of the Marina if you are going to Jebel Ali.

TA5

Exactly, i've never waited at I-5 for more than a minute, there are now 3 ways to get directly into the marina, 2 of which are faster than I-5 without traffic. As BR said, there is also the Beach Road option, however I-5 is never backed up coming from the Marina in the morning.