DLD's Flexi Rent: The End of Upfront Cheques in Dubai?

**Tim Elliott** (0:00)
Mira Business FM, good morning. This is the Morning Drive. It's time to talk property now. Mario Volpi is Cine Manager at EVA Real Estate. He is also a newspaper columnist. He's a podcaster, and he's an all-round property bloke.

**Mario Volpi** (0:15)
Good morning.

**Tim Elliott** (0:16)
What's that like?

**Mario Volpi** (0:17)
Bloke. That's very British, isn't it?

**Tim Elliott** (0:19)
It's very British. He's an all-round property, I nearly said geek, and then I thought, you're not.

**Mario Volpi** (0:23)
Well, I thought you were going to go with good egg, perhaps.

**Tim Elliott** (0:26)
That's a good one. Yeah, okay, I'll save that for next week. That's in the bank.
Mario, good to see you. Good morning.

**Mario Volpi** (0:32)
Thank you.

**Tim Elliott** (0:33)
How are you?

**Mario Volpi** (0:33)
Very good, yeah. Managed to not watch any football, so not so bleary-eyed this morning.

**Tim Elliott** (0:38)
Yeah, you look kind of quite bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, actually, I have to say. Normally you're here, and it's, you know, Chelsea have either been victorious or you're in an extremely bad mood.

**Mario Volpi** (0:49)
Yeah, yeah, that's the tale of the tale. Yeah, it is kind of. But we're off season, so it's okay.

**Tim Elliott** (0:54)
So let's look at what we're going to speak about today. We have a new initiative from the DLD, Dubai Land Department, a new flexi-rents initiative. That's kind of the main story. It dropped yesterday. We'll talk about that in a moment. We'll be talking about mega projects, Arada making their London debut, and then Dubai Real Estate rebounding. Here's the headline. As peace prospects return, so does buyer confidence. We'll have a look, delve into that story as well.
And then, and this is kind of your whole existence in this world. How many years in real estate for some?

**Mario Volpi** (1:29)
42 years in October.

**Tim Elliott** (1:30)
Yeah, without really any days off.

**Mario Volpi** (1:33)
Correct. Well, no sick days off.

**Tim Elliott** (1:35)
No sick days off.

**Mario Volpi** (1:36)
I'm allowed a holiday. You make it sound like a prison sentence.

**Tim Elliott** (1:42)
No, I'm just trying to over-reg the pudding. That's how it works. But you know a few things about being a real estate broker, being an estate agent as it's known from where you come from. So how to be a great real estate broker, the attitude you need, the attributes you need, skills that you need, all of those things.
There are many things to discuss there, aren't there?

**Mario Volpi** (2:06)
Is that the question? Do we launch into it now?

**Tim Elliott** (2:08)
We'll come to that in a little while. Main story this morning is this new FlexiRentz initiative.
We've learned about it yesterday. Everybody's talking about it. It's a new program. It's designed to ease the financial burden on tenants by offering more accessible and manageable rental payment options. The details and the mechanics in a second. But overall, what did you think?

**Mario Volpi** (2:30)
Well, any initiatives like this, I definitely welcome because it just makes life a lot easier for the tenant. Of course, when you talk about tenants, you've also got to talk about landlords as well. So this obviously is very weighted towards the benefit for the tenant. And I wondered whether it came about because of what Abu Dhabi had done just a couple of weeks ago with the sort of rent freeze helping their tenants there. So there was a few questions or some articles wondering what Dubai would do to follow suit. And that's just it. I've mentioned here on this program and on the podcast and things, Dubai is constantly looking, and in fact the UAE is constantly looking at ways of improving the lives of the residents. And if we're talking about real estate and rents, that's very, very important because the majority, I guess, of the people here, or certainly the people that first come here, live in rented accommodations. So it's a massive story.
It's bringing into line, it's bringing sort of the system into line a lot more to what perhaps we are like in the UK, in Europe, et cetera. It's interesting that they're talking about more flexible payment terms.
But the details whilst are there, they're always a little bit sporadic because nobody really knows how it actually is going to work. There's only 12 companies, apparently, that have been invited or are participating in it. And I think we talked off air. It's about the adoption, isn't it? Because the check systems here are super ingrained in the minds of the parties, especially the landlords.
You know, there are trust issues, or there's definitely trust that has to be involved. And that's why often landlords prefer the one check system, because then they don't have to worry about referencing. So if now more flexible terms are being put into play, does that mean that referencing is going to be coming in soon? I mean, that's a question perhaps for the future. If you're able to pay via a credit card system, does that mean again that the landlord is accepting a one payment from the credit card? Or is it 12 installments in the credit card? For me, there are still a lot of questions that need to be answered. But broadly speaking, I definitely welcome it. I'm not going to say it's about time, but it's about time, if you know what I'm trying to say there.