Escrow Secrets: How Dubai Property Investors Are Saving Big on Transfers

We have it all wrong. It's one of the safest places in the world. It is. I could have been one of those companies who chose to do things the wrong way. I've chosen because I want more protection for the customer. I've chosen to go down that path, which is expensive. Going back to Americans, I tend to find that they're probably the most skeptical buyers. Probably because of how they've seen the Middle East in their eyes. Even myself as a first generation Arab American, it took me coming to Dubai to really open my own eyes to see what it's really like. Totally, and that's why I was so impassioned to start doing what I'm doing. About 2 years ago when Americans were searching for real estate in Dubai, there was around 4 to 5,000 per month. Now there's around 70,000 per month in Americans searching for Dubai real estate purchase, villa purchase, things like that. Now there's actually developers from the US building properties here as well. So now that you're dealing with Americans and you're seeing this huge shift, I'm sure you've been asked this over and over, and I'm so excited with your answer because I already know the answer: 1031 exchanges. So you're ready to invest in Dubai. But here's the challenge. International banks hit you with transfer fees. Exchange rates eat into your profits, and sometimes your funds even get stuck. Once you own, whether it's rental income or commercial property, how do you bring that money back into your own currency? And if you're American, how do you structure it to save on taxes, maybe even a 1031 exchange? This is The Dubai Connect podcast. I'm GG Benitez, a certified international property specialist, a licensed realtor in Dubai and California, and CEO of GG Benitez International with offices here in Dubai, Spain, and San Diego. My mission is simple: to help global investors like you invest smarter in Dubai. Today, we're tackling one of the most important and often asked questions for every investor. How to manage money exchange in Dubai and simplify currency exchange in Dubai so you keep more of your returns. Joining me is Tristan Low, founder of two companies transforming how real estate transactions are done here. He leads Escrow Made Easy, the UAE's first DFSA regulated private escrow provider, and Domain Conveyancing, a firm known for managing complex property transfers with speed and clarity. Tristan's work sits at the intersection of real estate regulation and fintech. Together, his businesses are bringing transparency and structure to a market attracting more global investors than ever before. Today we're going to dive into how his teams are reshaping the future of property transactions and how you can make your move money smarter. Welcome to Season 6 of The Dubai Connect podcast. Tristan, welcome to The Dubai Connect podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm at a point right now where I've been here for 3 years and people are going to start getting those handovers, whether it's commercial property or rental income, and they're wanting to know how do they bring that money back to the States or to the UK or to other European countries, Canada as well, and do it with minimal fees. So tell us a little bit about your expertise and actually your own story of coming to Dubai is interesting. Sure. I've been here for 20 years. I've been in the real estate market for 20 years. I've not been an agent myself. I've always been a service provider to agencies. I started my life in mortgages. Then I moved into conveyancing and I was one of the first conveyancers in Dubai. That was 17 years ago. Conveyancing for those who don't know what it is is essentially the legal process of moving the property from A to B. We're an independent conveyancer who places ourselves between the agency, the banks, and all of the parties that are involved. We basically cross-check things, make sure that it's done correctly. We essentially make sure that the buyer and the seller get what they've agreed to. Off the back of that we have started Escrow Made Easy. Escrow Made Easy, like you said, is the first escrow company in Dubai that's properly licensed by the DFSA. Very important, properly licensed. Yes. The license that we hold is what's called a providing custody license. So that allows us to hold client funds and assist with purchases of assets. Those assets can be anything, not just real estate. But the bulk of what we do is real estate, mergers and acquisitions, angel investing. That allows us to actually hold client funds legally within the transfer process in Dubai. Basically we would attend the transfer, make the payments to the seller, or vice versa if it's a seller who doesn't have bank accounts here. We can place ourselves in between the buyer and seller and basically collect those funds on the transfer day and wire them to the seller. Because we have this license, we are able to also set up virtual accounts and sub accounts for clients. That means we can actually take a managers check in the client's name, put it into a bank account in the client's name which we create, and then wire the money to that person overseas. It's a very transparent, segregated account, proper way to do things basically. So let me ask because I'm dealing with global investors. Although my company we're starting to see global investors. When I first started my business, Tristan, I was really focused on being the connect for Americans because my home base is San Diego, California. I'm a licensed realtor in California. I'm licensed here in Dubai. So originally it was to bridge America and Dubai, but we see it's a global hub, Dubai real estate here. Now I'm seeing investors from all over the Americas with Canada, but also UK. I'm sure you're seeing a lot from the UK and European countries. Yes. Going back to Americans, I tend to find that they're probably the most skeptical buyers. And we were talking before the camera probably because of how they've seen the Middle East in their eyes. Even myself as a first generation Arab American, it took me coming to Dubai to really open my own eyes to see what it's really like. Totally. And that's why I was so impassioned to start doing what I'm doing because I'm like we have it all wrong. It's one of the safest places in the world. It is. And powerful as a woman. We're still developing a lot of things here obviously. Like I said, I'm the first escrow. That would have happened a long time ago if it was the US or Australia, but it took me a very long time to get this license and be the first. There are other companies that have these licenses, but we're talking about investment banks, we're talking about the likes of Goldman Sachs and these kind of guys who have this activity. They don't provide it to private entities. That's an important distinction. Yes. So I provide this service to private entities. And so then you're the DLD overseas as well, and is part of your licensing as well, right? No, it's only DIFC, DFSA. So the regulators of financial services in the UAE. And one thing that I'm really trying to do right now is get people to educate themselves about the proper way to do things. Because there are companies out there who are doing it just under a department of economics license with maybe a developer activity or something like that. But the proper way to do it is to do your own research. I encourage people even to research into my company because I know we have the right license. So I'm encouraging people to look into this. The two regulators of financial services are central bank, which regulates onshore activities. And then there's a free zone, which is ADGM and DIFC. They're the two other providers of financial services. DIFC is the Dubai based one and ADGM is the Abu Dhabi based regulator. Thank you for clarifying that. Yeah. So if you don't have an ADGM, a DIFC, or a central bank license, then you're not supposed to provide a financial activity. So like I said, ours is providing custody, which allows us to hold funds and deal with all the payment services and stuff that go along with that. So I encourage people to make sure you check who you're dealing with. Go onto the register. If they say they're regulated, go onto the register. If they say they're regulated by an entity that is not one of those three entities, they are not licensed to do it. Some companies are here conducting business under a UK based FCA license. They're not supposed to be doing that. They have usually what's called a marketing license. So they're providing the service from the UK and they're here doing sales on that. We are a local based entity who's allowed to actually handle client funds here. Thank you for clarifying that because that is probably one of the key things. If you watch my other episodes on The Dubai Connect podcast, Tristan, is I'm not just trying to sell any developer. I'm not just trying to work with any mortgage broker. You're friends with Warren from Mortgage Fighter. I'm not trying to just talk about any property management company. It's really myself vetting the top experts that are regulated and are legally acting here because it's my name. It's very important. I don't like to scare tactic people into things, but the fact is that if you send money through one of these licenses that are not regulated, there's a good chance that the money is blocked by the bank. So what happens is when they're sending money through these accounts, the bank sees maybe their activity is a corporate service provider. Soon as they start seeing money coming into that account for a purchase of real estate, they might get away with it one or two or three or four or 50 times. But eventually the bank says, Hold on, you're not licensed to do this. You need to stop it. And they'll usually politely block funds and say, Move the money somewhere else. And if you're one of those people who are unlucky enough to be in that situation, where you're the buyer or the person that sent your money, then your money is stuck. Exactly. Yeah. So the way that we do things is everything is in a segregated account. We have proper indemnity insurance. We have proper capital liquidity ratios like a normal bank would have. We're regulated by the DFSA, who's the Dubai regulator. We have to provide proper reports to them. They audit us regularly. Everything is done in a means to protect the customer. Thank you. So I could have been one of those companies who chose to do things the wrong way. I've chosen because I want more protection for the customer. I've chosen to go down that path, which is expensive. Very expensive. But it's worth it in my opinion. It's worth being that person, that one person who can say, I'm here to protect you. Thank you, Tristan. Protect you, safety. So now I feel very confident that you're the person that's coming to present this information to my global investors. There are two scenarios I really want to approach. For a global investor that's purchasing an off-plan project, and they're going to be let's say an American transferring funds. First of all, what has happened to every single initial transfer, every single one for the past 3 years, is that very first one ends up being a challenge, whether it's the bank or the credit card charge. Yeah, so this is a good point that you brought up. In Dubai, you have different classifications of real estate purchases, right? So we primarily deal with the secondary market purchases. That can be off-plan secondary or it could be secondary market titled deed properties, right? Okay. Now, when you buy a property directly from a developer, the developer sets up their own escrow account which is regulated by RERA, which is the regulatory body for real estate in Dubai. Whenever your money goes into that escrow account, the developer has to prove what they're spending that money on. So the customer is protected by RERA under those circumstances. We're there for all of the rest of the circumstances. Whenever it's a secondary off-plan or a secondary titled deed property, they're the transactions that we primarily handle. So we're there to set up an escrow account for the buyer and seller. We do due diligence. Essentially what we need is just email, phone number and password of the person. We then have a fully automated system. It's a banking system, right? The person is sent a link. They create a username and password. They then have to do facial verification and upload all the KYC documents. Once that's completed, our compliance team reviews what they've submitted. There might be a little bit of back and forth about maybe an update of a document or something like that. But once they're onboarded, we have a fully automated system that then communicates with the person about what payments they need to make and booking rates and everything like that. The idea of this is that the US is a very different time zone. I don't particularly want to get up at 3:00 a.m. in the morning to deal with a US customer. But the idea of this is that the customer can do a lot of this themselves. There's always people that they can contact throughout. There's always oversight from compliance so that everything is done properly. But yeah, they can if they want to automate a lot of the process and do it themselves. Once they from the first submission to completion, it usually takes around 48 hours for people to be onboarded. And then they can start to send money. Obviously it depends on the person and how quickly they send money, the rates and what currency they're using. But I would say most transactions are finished within four to five days from start to finish. Are your fees, are you comfortable discussing fees on this? Yeah, of course. We have two different fee structures. If we are doing the FX, let's say you're sending US dollars to us and we are converting the US dollar from US to Dirham, then we charge 0.25% plus 6,300 dirhams. If you feel that you can get a better rate, which is very unlikely because we get very good rates, but if you feel that you can get a better rate, then we charge 1% plus 6,300 dirhams if we're being sent Dirham. The reality is 99.9% of the time it's the 0.25% because we can get much better rates than most banks. Okay. So Tristan, as The Dubai American Connect, I have to ask you this. You said something so interesting. What are the stats and how has it changed for Americans searching in Dubai real estate? Yeah. About 2 years ago when Americans were searching for real estate in Dubai, buying real estate in Dubai, there was around 4 to 5,000 per month. Now there's around 70,000 per month in Americans searching for Dubai real estate purchase, villa purchase, things like that. It's a massive increase. That's a massive increase. Yes. We've even seen the first developers come into the market from the US. I've always heard of people testing the market, but now there's actually developers from the US building properties here as well. So now that you're dealing with Americans and you're seeing this huge shift, I'm sure you've been asked this over and over, and I'm so excited with your answer because I already know the answer: 1031 exchanges. Yes. So this is exciting and obviously I'm trying to push this myself right now. Most Americans know what a 1031 exchange is. I don't think we need to explain what it is. But because I am the first escrow company in Dubai, part of the missing puzzle to being able to do a 1031 in the UAE or in Dubai was having an escrow company. So essentially we've partnered up with a few qualified intermediaries in the US. We would be the ones who escrow the funds and we've successfully done some of these transactions already as well. So what that allows an American to now do is buy an investment property, sell that investment property, and then stagger the capital gains tax later on. This is quite exciting and I've already got a very steady stream of 1031 exchanges that we're doing. Which is fantastic. And then one thing I do need to clarify: you cannot do a 1031 exchange with off-plan projects. You can't do it with off-plan. It has to be an investment property. It has to be, when you sell it, a like-for-like purchase. And that investment property has to have been rented out for 2 to 3 years as well. You can push it to two, but 3 is the better. And one more clarification from my understanding, correct me if I'm wrong. You cannot do a 1031 exchange from the US to foreign. It has to be domestic to domestic. Yes. Correct. And then foreign to foreign. So it doesn't have to be Dubai to Dubai. Yeah. Correct. You can't say if you sold a property in Dubai, you couldn't buy a property in the US. But you could in Spain. Yes. Or UK or anywhere else in the world that you wanted to. Yes. In fact, most of the ones that we're doing now, there's a few that are inside of Dubai, but there's a couple that have been buying property in the UK. That's fantastic because this is obviously what's unique to a US investor. You always hear all these brokers talk about tax-free, tax-free, tax-free. And yes, there are no property taxes in Dubai and that's huge across the board for all buyers. But unique to Americans is that we are stuck paying capital gains taxes, right? We're stuck paying taxes. But that 1031 exchange is such an important factor that helps reduce taxes. And until now, I haven't found someone that understands how to do it in Dubai. Now that a lot of my purchase original investors are turning into the secondary and resale market and it's more maturing, I'm glad that I found you to be able to handle it. Yes. Yeah. So anyone that you have, reach out. You're there. Yep. I'm here. I love this. I'm glad I found you. Yeah. Warren introduced us from Mortgage Fighter. You worked with Warren, right? Yeah, many years ago. I love it. And you're making sound. You're from Australia, right? I'm Australian. Yes. And you lived here how many years? 20 years. But so I think if another 3 years I'll have been in the UAE longer than Australia. Longer than Australia. Because you're still young, not like me, old. Well, Tristan, thank you. I think that you're invaluable to what is happening right now with all the global investors coming here and now wanting to know how to minimize those fees, how to do it safely, and then minimize the taxes with the 1031 exchanges, and do it with a certified, legally set up expert who is here, isn't running away. You've been here for two decades, so you're not running away. So with that, I hope that you gain the knowledge that you want. In fact, if you would like to know more about what the rates and fees would be for you, I have a link in my description and we can continue to discuss next steps for you as an investor. We've seen today how the right partner can make all the difference when it comes to money exchange in Dubai and simplifying currency exchange in Dubai, as well as your 1031. Whether you're buying your first property or managing multiple investments, keeping more of your returns comes down to reducing fees, securing transfers, and structuring things the right way. But every investor situation is different. If you'd like to see exactly what solutions and savings could look like for you, go to my profile and fill out the quick investor questionnaire. My team and I will connect you directly so you can move your money smarter and maximize your Dubai investment returns. Thank you. Make sure to like, subscribe, follow, and stay tuned for the next episode.