Bring on move 15 in 15 years...

I haven't updated in a while because of various things including a trip to Nepal, Christmas, and so on but plan to get back into the habit when I can.  Really must get round to uploading some of those elephant polo pictures.

Anyway, we've been content in this apartment for getting on for nine months now and had hoped to renew our tenancy in April, but alas, we find ourselves preparing to move once more. There are laws in Dubai introduced after the "good" times to protect tenants from unscrupulous landlords who imposed astronomical rent increases. In some ways the laws aren't necessary, particularly if you're just after a flat, as there is a glut available thanks to the out of control construction sector.

Unfortunately, these laws do not protect you from landlords who are total pillocks and living in cloud cuckoo land.  We could fight our case to stay here through various bodies but it would involve time and money which would be better spent finding a place with a landlord who is not a pillock.

Here is a letter that I wrote when it became apparent that we will be moving house again in April.  This will be the 15th time I've moved house since I left home to go to university in 1997 so you can imagine how utterly thrilled I am about this.  Don't worry, I didn't send it and I let the Sand Warlock handle most of the communication side as he is less inclined to lose his temper and start making biological suggestions to people he gets annoyed with.  It made me feel better though.

Dear Landlord

In response to your recent rent increase “suggestion”, we cannot afford to pay 125,000AED per annum rent. We are not sure why you would think we would choose to live in a 85,000AED per annum flat if we could afford 40,000 extra in rent so we are amazed that you would even suggest it. If our circumstances had changed to that effect in the course of the year, we would certainly have been looking for another flat with more space or putting some money aside for our future rather than blithely agreeing to pay 47 per cent extra rent for the same flat to line your pitiful pockets. What kind of morons do you think we are? We are not sure where you get the information that ‘rents are returning to what they were’ before Dubai’s widely publicised gargantuan economic crash but I suspect it was in some kind of psychedelic dream brought on by all the crack you have clearly been smoking.

There are many similar flats in the same area that are advertised at the same rent or a few thousand dirhams more than we are currently paying so we feel that you would be wasting your time trying to impose such a high a rent on a new tenant. Why would any new tenant rent this flat for 125,000 when they can get a similar one for 85,0000 to 90,000AED?

It is illegal in Dubai to raise the rent when a tenant has lived in a property for less than two years so why are you trying to do so? Surely as a landlord it is your responsibility to be aware of the law and adhere to it. If it is the case that you want to live in the property yourself, as you stated on your eviction notice AFTER telling us that you wanted to put the rent up by 40,000, then of course there is nothing that we can do about that and accept that we need to move out, you just need to be honest with us about it.  Why the subterfuge?

We have been good tenants taking good care of the property, giving our neighbours no cause whatsoever to complain and have made minimal contact with you during our tenancy and only when completely necessary. We are residential landlords with property in the UK and do not currently get as high a rent as we would like but we appreciate the value of good, reliable tenants as they inevitably save money in the long term because there are fewer missed payments and the need for repairs is less likely. It is a pity that you cannot do the same.

We will be moving out in April.  Please don’t expect us to listen to your feeble, piffling reasons for trying to impose this rent increase on us. We are only interested in hearing from you if you are agreeing to keep our rent at the same level. Otherwise we will be complying with the eviction notice which you issued when we failed to reply to an email within 24 hours. Considering how long it took you to respond to phone calls when we first moved into the flat and our fridge had broken that was quite frankly the last word in hypocrisy. I hope you are totally ashamed of yourself and your next tenant trashes the flat and never bothers to pay the rent, you total and complete idiotic scumbag.

**** you, you imbecilic plank-brained wankerish d*ckhead. I’ve met some morons in my time but you’ve won the award for the biggest ever.

Sincere congratulations and well done you!

Dubai Sand Witch