Dubai Property Record Sales, Softening Rents, and New Horizons in Tashkent

Tim Elliott (0:00)

It's the Morning Drive, Real Estate, Wednesday morning. Mario Volpi is a real estate podcaster. Well, he's just a podcaster, really. He could podcast about anything. I think you could, Mario. Good morning.

Mario Volpi (0:10)

Morning to you.

Tim Elliott (0:11)

Real estate podcasting is your thing. The Dubai Property Podcast is available now. He's a newspaper columnist. He is a senior manager at EVA Real Estate here in Dubai.

And just back from Tash Kent.

Mario Volpi (0:23)

Yes.

Tim Elliott (0:24)

How was it?

Mario Volpi (0:25)

It was amazing.

Tim Elliott (0:26)

No pictures of you on a horse, a la Vladimir Putin. I was so disappointed in you, the one thing we asked for.

Mario Volpi (0:33)

I'm sorry.

I failed you miserably. Actually, I didn't see any horses, funny enough, to even approach. Well, that's not true.

Tim Elliott (0:42)

Do you approach a horse?

Mario Volpi (0:44)

I suppose you do, don't you? Of course you approach a horse in a very careful way, and not from behind either, because they could lash out.

Tim Elliott (0:50)

Ah, really?

Mario Volpi (0:51)

The nearest I got to a horse was when we went to this place, which I can't even remember where it was, but it was outside of Tash Kent, up in the mountains, which was lovely to actually see proper mountains. The last time I saw mountains was on my way to Hatter, of course, the Hadgell Mountains. And they had this body of water, which I was disappointed to then learn it was manmade. It was like a reservoir, but it looked like a lake, and people were on speedboats and everything on it. Huge, huge. So going back to the horse, they had a proper big chessboard there, so I was moving the horse on the chessboard. Oh, the knight. That's the nearest I got. The knight, sorry, yeah. In Italy, we call it the horse.

Yeah.

Tim Elliott (1:35)

Okay.

Mario Volpi (1:35)

So that was the nearest I got to a horse. I'm sorry. That was it, really.

Tim Elliott (1:39)

Kind of close. You could have sent a picture.

Mario Volpi (1:42)

Well, there is a video.

Tim Elliott (1:44)

I knew there would be.

Mario Volpi (1:45)

Now, the thing is, I actually played chess on the phone with a colleague of mine on the plane, and I beat him twice. So this was a revenge match, but he royally beat me. Really?

Tim Elliott (1:57)

In a live arena?

Mario Volpi (1:59)

In a live, the big one where you move them, where you walk around, where you have to have a helicopter view of your board.

Tim Elliott (2:04)

Is that harder to play?

Mario Volpi (2:06)

It was a little bit because obviously, you have to step back and you're looking in, because you're actually on the board, obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no. Listen, Tashkent, an amazing place.

I can't even describe what I was thinking before I went there. I didn't Google it or anything like that. You just went completely image-free, didn't you? Absolutely.

Tim Elliott (2:26)

Yeah, yeah.

Mario Volpi (2:29)

We stayed at the Hilton. There was a series of hotels around. There's the JW Marriott. But these are all big skyscraper-type hotels, right opposite a beautiful park that had Dubai moor-esque fountains as well. Although I didn't actually see them going up, but you could see the gubbins of it all in the water.

There was a mall to the right-hand side of that.

Yeah, it's just quite modern, or more modern than I had expected. I then learned that Sheikh Hamdan goes to Uzbekistan quite a lot, from the natural beauty point of view. He goes there with his favorite falcon, and he flies the falcon around.

And I understand that Uzbekistan is the fastest growing touristic destination, certainly of Central Asia. I'm not necessarily saying the world, but there's a lot of movement at government level. The UAE government and the Uzbek government are forging ties with business relationships. And actually, on the last night, we went because we were launching Mira Golf Estates, which is going to be the first 18-year-old golf course that was produced or created within a residential master plan. It's a huge, huge master plan. My understanding is something like 150 hectares. And I tried to remember what a hectare was. I seem to have in my head is like sort of 10 acres is a hectare. I'm not sure. Maybe you can Google it as we talk. But anyway, it's a huge plot of land. We got there via private taxis and things. So I can't even tell you where in Tashkent we were.

But we had an amazing picnic. They described it as a picnic on the land or piece of the land. And this picnic, when we walked around the corner, we saw all these tables, sort of trellis tables. They just seemed to go on forever. It was like the biggest wedding ever. Beautifully laid out with wonderful array of fruits and sort of appetizers, whilst they were then in the center cooking bread and cooking the plov, which is their national dish, which is basically like a biryani, but without the spices. So it's rice and meat. Often, it can be horse meat as well. That's probably why I didn't see any horses because they're eating them all. I don't know.