23 July, 2008

Chill out, landlords

One must admire the creativity that comes alive within a landlords' brain, once his greed buttons are switched on. I've got several friends right now, suffering from a new landlord sickness, the "chiller fever".
During the rental term they have a received an invoice from their landlord (without further explanation), saying that although the AC was free in the building, they now decided to start charging for the chiller. Cheapest chiller fees for a 1 bedroom start at 3600 AED a year. I find that unbelievable. The rent committee didn't comment and seems is not interested to follow up on such "small" issues.
I say - cool idea landlords, easy way to make an extra couple of hundred thousand dirhams a year with no extra effort! No honestly, I hope you choke on the money.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

dahlings.... leave dubai , come to bahrain. better place. nice people. cheaper. think about it

B.D. said...

The greed is incredible. Thanks to rent caps they can't raise your rent more than 5%, and thanks to the rental committee (or whatever it's called) they can't willy-nilly evict you. So, now they've come up with the chiller fees.

Keef said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Keef said...

When we moved into The Gardens at Jebel Ali, A/c was Dhs 4000 a year, but the charge was waived if you worked in any of the Free Zones. And then, a couple of years ago, it wasn't. Understand, you had always been paying for the electricity to make it go, but suddenly you also had to pay for the cold air that went into it.

Really, I've been out of Dubai for a year now, and it's still making me sick!

Anonymous said...

"I hope you choke on the money" - Amen to that.

Anonymous said...

You guys don't understand how difficult it is to survive as a landlord. The building next to yours is making 3 times your income and you have to deal with those stingy expats who won't cough up the money you desperately need..

Anonymous said...

you think this is bad, wait till you read this BS:

http://www.ameinfo.com/164408.html

Jayne said...

I've just gone through the same kind of thing but with parking. We were informed we would get an underground parking space (admittedly about 50m away from the building, but no sweat) when we took out the lease for our current apartment. 3yrs down the line & without any notification at all, the parking privilege has been withdrawn, but I can 'buy' it for Dh5000.
Greedy fuckers.

Kyle said...

Jayne:

Just out of curiosity, that 5K is for one or two cars? I also understand you guys are Harley owners? Do you guys have to pay for a spot to park your bikes? If so, how much?

Tys on Ice said...

greed....wht else is new?

Dubai Jazz said...

I think a substantial number of landlords started billing tenants for chillers after DEWA hiked its prices.

Anonymous said...

Wonder if they will still charge for the AC when they can totally reset the cost of the lease when it comes up for renewal?

Anonymous said...

It's not too long until they start charging a fee for using elevators and stairs to get to your apartment.

Anonymous said...

I've heard a lot of people complain about landlords like this...until they buy their own property here and become landlords. After that they move on over to the skyscrapercity forums and complain about how biased UAE laws are in favor of tenants. So ultimately it's all a matter of where you are looking at it from.

Anonymous said...

People are always complaining,why dont they leave and live a better quality of life in another place.

Anonymous said...

These Greedy Landlords will go even boyond this. They will have an expected income for an year. what matters here is how more the others are making as pointed out by " Dubai Entrepreneur". Dear Mr. Dubai Entrepreneur, think of people just surviving..........

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