Toby Young didn't start out pretty well in his early years of stay in Dubai. The British expatriate had stumble on a series of unfortunate events, especially in terms of renting properties. Young though didn't remain unlucky. According to a report in The National, Young's last two issues with his landlord made him decide to finally quit from his job being an oil broker, and focus on what he's really good at, i.e., realty properties.
In an interview, Toby expressed his sentiments of his earlier years of stay in Dubai: "Having picked up that experience from going to Rera [Real Estate Regulatory Agency] a number of times and having different landlords who wanted to do different things, I came upon the idea that you could build something that will help people, that will be able to offer advice".
"From there I initially sketched out the idea and, over time, it has developed and evolved into what we have today," Mr. Young added.
So Young came up with a website, Propertyrights.ae, which is designed to give helpful advice to both landlords and tenants in Dubai concerning their rights for a Dh100 fee.
The said website lets customers fill out an electronic form where they will provide important details like their email addresses as well as information regarding their tenancy contract. Toby personally designed the fully automated process of the system. "As soon as their details are in, it sits there on our database. I do nothing with those details unless they tell me something is incorrect - in which case I will go in and change it," he explained.
In an article found in Inside.ae, Mr. Young elaborated further that "A lot of people don't understand exactly how the rule works because there are all sorts of rules that have changed over the years that people get confused with. If someone goes looking for that information it takes time to find."
"If you want to find out all the relevant information with the laws there is a 30-page document that you can read. Our way of sending it out has that narrowed down to a page or a page and a half. The emails are timed to reach people, so they are aware of what can happen before they need to be," he added.
At present, his site has hundreds of subscribers and counting. Mr. Young hopes that this figure will exponentially increase over time through a partnership with real estate agents who will sign up to utilize the said system and be able to send the information to tenants and their landlords.
Dubai's sales director of Belleview Real Estate, Leigh Borg, asserts that a lot of his friends and colleagues call Mr. Young for advice regarding their legal rights as tenants. "I think anything to give a tenant peace of mind and help them fully understand their rights is a good thing. They should obviously have been informed by the agency when they take on the unit, but sometimes they don't always receive the information," Mr. Borg said.
The information can easily be accessed over the internet if customers would want to find it. "There is a lot more information freely available now. As a tenant and a landlord, you should know your rights fully and what the laws are," asserts Mr. Borg.
