Confessions of a dream-broker!

I met Shubin and Geeta in 2017. They had their first child, had been in their jobs for quite a while and wanted to get off renting. At Dh 60k a year, they had spent a fortune on rent. We put a mortgage together for them and bought a nice little 2-bed + maid-room townhouse, good enough for the young family and the maid. The Dh 1.1 million small house had a 80% ltv mortgage of Dh 880,000. The house was a bit cramped, but the family was happy to have a home of their own. We stayed in touch, as I do with most of my clients and their life was cruising along just fine.

April of 2020 was a watershed month. Country was in lockdown and life seemed to have come to a standstill. We had moved into our new villa a few months earlier. “If we were in that silicon apartment, I would have left you by now”, my wife kept throwing the jokes, as we passed the days of the lockdown in the new villa, thankful that we all had our own rooms and a garden to spend our evenings in. The economy had come to a standstill. We were all looking into an abyss and no one knew the answers.

The lockdown eased in May. Geeta called me and her first sentence was “Sam, I am leaving Shubin”, this was a shock. I called Shubin. Lockdown meant they were both working from home. Stuck in a 2-bed with two kids and a maid meant that they were in each other’s faces all day, every day for three months now. The stress was too much to take. The solution - move into a bigger house. I looked at their finances. The joint income has crossed Dh 50k and they had saved up Dh 250k. The outstanding mortgage on the house was Dh 810k and the value had gone up to Dh 1.25 mln. We sold it and put together a cash pot Dh 440k.

The Pandemic had thrown up quite a few distress properties. Al Furjan had large 5,000 square-feet 5- bed independent villas, available for an attractive Dh 2.9 mln. We bought one with a 85% ltv mortgage. The total cash spent was Dh 640k. Shubin and Geeta moved in the summer of 2020, the family of five had five large bedrooms, terraces, two lounges and gardens all around.

Earlier this year Geeta called me again “Sam, we have a house, but I am always worried about retirement, what should we do”. We valued the house, the figure came back at a whopping Dh 4.5 mln. The outstanding mortgage was Dh 2.3 mln and we released an equity of Dh 1.3 mln. Using this for the downpayments, we bought the family two 3-bed townhouses in Villa Nova, rented out and generating enough revenue, covering the costs and returning nice monthly profit as well.