So you’ve heard that rental prices are coming down? Abu Dhabi Week finds out why it’s harder than it looks to find just the right villa at just the right price

When Simon and Cindy Padgett moved to Abu Dhabi from South Africa two years ago, they didn’t mind the high-rise city-centre lifestyle. Since the Salam Street project began, however, the traffic and parking issues made their three-bedroom flat across from Abu Dhabi Mall unbearable – especially for their daughter, five year old Tyler.
“We were in a very nice apartment,” says Simon. “But obviously it didn’t have the sort of space we were used to in South Africa. It was fine for the first year—but after two, we were ready for a garden and a swimming pool for our daughter. When I heard the prices had started coming down, I went looking for a villa.”
Though rumours abound that rents have begun to fall, Padgett found that it’s just not the case – not on the island of Abu Dhabi, at least. “In fact, they’re continuing to rise,” he says. So the Padgetts expanded their search to the mainland and contacted rental agents and a few owners.
“We first went to some of the developments around the airport like Ah Raha Gardens, Musaffah, and Mohammed Bin Zayed City,” says Simon. “We must have looked at 20 or 30 villas or shared villas in our price range, and I was pretty amazed to see how difficult it was to find something.” The main issue – value for money. “I found that often prices were still quite high, AED 250,000 and up. But looking at the values of the properties and what the landlords were making on them, the rents just didn’t make sense.
Simon, who happens to be an accountant, concludes that “Most of the places we looked at were owned by landlords obviously trying to maximise their return”.  How so? “A lot of the properties were split villas, that is, one villa divided into four, six, even eight separate apartments. Some didn’t have kitchens, some were sharing front doors and back doors, the gardens were sometimes shared between eight people. You’d end up with half a bathroom or half a kitchen just so the landlord could maximise his return.
“It just doesn’t make sense to buy into an expensive product and not get a normal home.”
After a two-month nightmare of agents not turning up or asking for viewing fees, the Padgetts happened on Sas Al Nakhl. The price was right: “rents for three-bedroom villas had just dropped from AED 290,000 to 200,000, which is quite significant”. And the location wasn’t bad; just off the Al Ain highway near the cricket stadium, this area is closer than Khalifa City A and chock full brand new villas.
For the first time the Padgetts started to feel optimistic. Says Simon: “We were seeing three-bedroom single-family homes with maid’s quarters, gardens, swimming pools, supermarket, and nice facilities in the compound – for prices that were reasonable compared to everything else. So we put a deposit down there and then.”
And not a moment too soon. “When we first looked at the compound in Sas Al Nakhl, there were 42 three-bed villas available,” recalls Cindy, a registrar at GEMS American Academy. “The day we signed our rental agreement, 12 days later, there were only three left.”
Even at a rent they consider to be almost reasonable, the Padgetts will be paying double what their flat had cost.  “I guess that’s just the price you pay for less traffic, more car parking space, and fewer noisy neighbours. It’s not easy to find something—the market doesn’t seem to like the drop in rents, so they’re not making it easy for people.”
In fact, the Padgett’s latest drama is over the lawn. “We chose the villa because it came with a lawn; the other villas only had sand where a back garden would be, and I didn’t want my yard to be the litterbox for all the neighbourhood cats,” says Cindy. “We hated to spend the money to put in a lawn at our own expense that would only increase the value of the villa for our landlord, so we chose one with an established lawn already in place.” Only now have they learned that the current tenants plan to take their grass with them when they leave.
Even so, Cindy is overjoyed with her new villa. “I can’t wait to entertain at home and have barbeques with friends on the weekends. Now living in Abu Dhabi will be a lot more like living at home in South Africa – I think it’s only fair for my daughter.”

[Originally published in Abu Dhabi Week vol 2 issue 22]

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