Manage Your Dubai Rental Property From Anywhere in the World

Are you worried about how to manage your portfolio from across the globe here in Dubai? How to maximize your short-term rentals? Don't worry, I got you here on The Dubai Connect. Today, I have one of the premier short-term rental management companies to help answer your questions. Welcome to season 6 of The Dubai Connect podcast, a top-ranked Dubai real estate podcast hosted by myself, GG Benitez, a certified international property specialist and a licensed realtor on a mission to guide global real estate investors into Dubai, the future of real estate investing. One question I have over and over again is once these off-plan projects start to hand over, Gigi, how am I going to handle the rental management of it? I got you because I have Burhan. Hi Burhan. Hi Gigi. Thanks for having me. Thank you for coming. We've been in touch. Burhan is the head of sales. We've been talking for two years. He's the head of sales for Guest Ready, which is one of the largest property management companies here in the region and even globally. How many offices do you have? So we work in Dubai, Spain, Portugal, France, and the UK as well. You just moved to Dubai 3 days ago. I did, yes. Welcome. Thank you. You're going to live the Dubai dream. Burhan, you have been in this industry for how long? I've been in short-term rentals and service accommodation since 2014, so over 10 years now. You've seen it all, and the UK has been a big part of your baby. You helped grow Guest Ready there. And now you're here in Dubai because there's so much need for your services. How long has Guest Ready been in Dubai? Guest Ready has been in Dubai since 2016, so around 9 years. We have close to 500 properties in Dubai. You're also in Saudi, I believe you have some properties there. We do have some properties in Saudi. We're growing there. But really Dubai is the main city that we've been in for the longest time in the GCC. What I like, you know, part of my job is to vet developers, attorneys, mortgage lenders, and property managers for my investors globally and specifically in the US. There are a few property management companies that I am aware of, but what I believe differentiates Guest Ready is that you have this global presence. What would you say is a benefit and advantage to users due to your global presence? There are several advantages. One of the major ones is obviously being a global company, we have best practices from different markets. We have a larger team. We're able to collaborate more. The crucial thing in terms of driving value is that we have an ecosystem of guests who stay with us in the UK, who stay with us in France. Then they know that we also have properties in Dubai and they're able to come and stay here. I think that's the biggest advantage of working with a global company. To support that, we see now around 15 to 20% of our reservations are direct bookings. We have our own direct booking website and a new loyalty program for guests. Fantastic. This really helps in terms of ensuring that we're able to drive higher occupancy. And that's the key, right? Higher occupancy means maximum returns for the investor and trustworthiness. Absolutely. It's about securing the highest nightly rates, right? And the best occupancy you can get. It's always about finding the balance between the two to maximize returns. I'm going to ask you steps A through Z what to do. But one question I have for you is why would someone want to use Guest Ready versus just using the services that Airbnb or Booking.com offers an investor or a homeowner? The major reason why people want to use us is it's a hands-off solution. Of course, you could list your property yourself on Airbnb or Booking.com. You'd have to list individually on each of those platforms. You'd have to have a housekeeping solution. You'd have to ensure there's a way of managing the payments. So it's quite a lot to do for one person. If you're looking for a hands-off solution, that definitely isn't a hands-off solution. Most people work with us because they know it's very simple. It's very transparent. You have access to your owner app through which you can see the reservations as they come in real time. You can see how your property is performing. You can see what your net earnings are, what the costs are. It's all at a click of a button. It's very easy. And then even things in between such as furnishing or maintenance or issues that may arise, it's all handled through you whether the property was on Booking.com or Airbnb or anywhere else, right? Correct. We'll take care of everything. If we talk through the process from start to end, let's say you're investing in a property in Dubai. It's off-plan and it comes to handover. Even if you don't want to be in Dubai, you can't be in Dubai for the handover. We can arrange power of attorney. We can therefore go and pick up your keys, do the handover. We can arrange the furnishing. Either if you are in Dubai a live meeting with our stylist or we can do that over a video call. We have various packages starting from around 23,000 dirhams for a studio up to about 60,000 dirhams for a three-bed. We have our basic, standard, and recommended packages. We have different themes that the stylist will talk through and you can pick which one fits you best. We'll then go ahead and execute that, take care of furnishing. As part of our onboarding process, we'll do thorough checks of the property. You'll receive a report if there's any issues on handover. We will then ensure that the warranty that the developers offered, if there's any issues, we can handle that for you. It really is a fully hands-off service. Following that initial stage, once the apartment's ready, we will then arrange the photo shoot. We'll arrange a deep clean. We'll have everything set up and then we'll take care of the listings creation. We'll have the properties listed on Airbnb, Booking.com, our own channel, all the major portals, but also we work with local portals like PropertyFinder. That's key at the moment in this market because you want to be able to drive not just your typical short-term stays, but also what we call mid-term stays. Mid-term stays at the moment typically cater towards, for example, relocation. Dubai's population is growing very fast. There are a lot of incentives. A lot of people are moving here looking for short-term accommodation. It's a very big sector. They tend to be one-month to three-month stays, predominantly catering to relocation, but also digital nomads, people who are coming to Dubai for a project or for a placement. They don't want to commit to a long-term rental, but they need a place to stay and they want a turnkey solution. That's a massive market. Absolutely. I'm a case in point. I come for two to three months at a time, and that's exactly a scenario where I myself would benefit. There are so many such as myself that come and do business here but maybe don't want to commit to long-term rental. From step A through Z, they would come to you. You would help with the onboarding. Another piece of the pie is, what about strategizing on the pricing to maximize the rental yields? How does that happen? How does that work? Yes. Every owner has an account manager who is responsible for ensuring that their returns are maximized. Looking at what's happening in the market, adjusting the nightly rates to maximize occupancy and just to get that balance right between occupancy and nightly rates. We also have a pricing team, both a local pricing team and a global pricing team who oversee the performance of the listings. Through this we're able to ensure that pricing is always optimized. In addition to all of that, we have our own technology, Rental Ready. We have our own pricing algorithm which runs in the background picking up on peaks in demand and adjusts the pricing to ensure we're getting the balance right between occupancy and nightly rates. But everything you're saying is just music to my ears because majority of my investors aren't even coming to Dubai. Part of the hesitation, up until maybe a couple years ago when I created The Dubai Connect, was that Americans knew there was stuff happening in Dubai. They wanted to diversify and place their foot here in Dubai, but they were worried about how am I going to get on a flight every time? What's going to happen with the property management? You're saying from the handover basically, you're handling everything to maximize their investment dollars, even in between tenants that come in, and even strategizing between short-term, long-term, and mid-term. Correct, yes. I think it's such a big thing. We've seen long-term rentals also grow very fast in Dubai. Significantly. We've seen them catching up really with short-term returns. But there are a lot of advantages for an investor to stick with a service solution that's more short-term, mid-term. The biggest issue you have with long-term rentals here is then you're committed to renewals. If you're an investor and you're thinking about your exit and you want flexibility, you really want a service that's going to allow you to move between those without committing you in. If you were in a situation where you wanted to sell or you were looking at something else, you had the capital appreciation. The beauty of our service is you can block calendar dates out. It means that if you needed to do viewings, they'd be ready. You also know the apartment is always going to be show-ready because after every stay, we're going to clean it. It's going to be ready, set up for the next guest, which means it's going to be presentable. If you needed to sell, it's in its best light. That's one advantage. The second advantage is a lot of people invest in Dubai, they may want to come, they may want to visit. And they should. And we definitely recommend you do. You have that option. If we're managing the property like I mentioned, you have control over your calendar. You can log into the app. You can book a little bit of time for yourself to stay in your own place and you know it'll be ready for you when you come. We'll clean it after you've left and we carry on with the reservations. That flexibility I think is really important for investors, especially in a market like this where you see a lot of growth. If you're investing off-plan, often by the time it comes to handover you're already seeing great capital appreciation. Having that option I think is really useful. Very well said. Now what about maintenance in between? What if something breaks down? What if things go wrong? These things do happen, of course. We have a full field team that will take care of that. We have an operations team who will take care of maintenance, who will take care of repairs and also if there's any issues developer-related in terms of the warranty, we will step in and work with the developers to take care of those. It really is a hands-off solution in terms of maintenance, in terms of pricing, in terms of day-to-day management, in terms of your DTCM permits and all of those initial leads. That's another important factor. You handle the permit to even be able to rent this property out. So if I'm sitting in America and now you're sending me this and you're telling me something is broken, how do I know I'm not being gouged on the maintenance charge of fixing that? Well first of all, we have our own in-house teams in Dubai who would manage that. Secondly, we're going to share with you the costs. The only scenario in which we may go ahead and do the work is if there's any issues in terms of guest safety. Then we may go ahead and do that work. But we would always notify the owners of the cost. Would you share more than one quote? Are you just giving me one quote and I don't have a choice? Or if I say that sounds a little expensive, are you going to give me options? We can give options. We'll share with you the quote. We'll share with you pictures and explain the work. Because what we do after every guest, our cleaning team goes in, they take pictures. We have strong SLAs, and a lot of this comes from the best practices of working in different markets. We're able to share that. We've been in operation for 9 years, so we know there's a lot that goes into short-term rentals. You have two stakeholders, right? You have the guests and you have the owners. It's all about the guest experience to be able to maximize your returns. Of course, we want transparency with the owners because they're key partners for us. Without them, we don't have the properties. We'll always want to ensure that we're repairing it in the fastest but most efficient way. We're set up to do that. We'll have transparency. We'll share pictures. We'll explain what the issue is. Our account management team is there to explain that to owners and work with them so they understand. What are your fees? I think that's an important question we should address, right? Our fees range between 15 to 20%. It depends on various things like the availability, the contract length because we have flexibility there. If you're willing to commit to 3 years, it's obviously cheaper. But if you need to do one year and see how it goes, it's a little bit more expensive. There's a lot of flexibility. Is that the standard? Is that the norm in this region? 15 to 20%. Yes, that's the norm. I feel like we addressed every question and I don't see any hesitation for somebody to really feel comfortable knowing that they don't have to come here. They can purchase an off-plan project and know that once that project is ready, Guest Ready is going to help them maximize their yields in a comfortable, transparent way. You've strategized, and that's another important feature. They're not going to have to try to figure it out from there. You, with your pricing strategist and with your account manager, will help guide them with regards to whether it should be short-term, mid-term, or long-term. Yes. That's another important factor because these are investors and investors want to know that they're coming in here and for the least amount of money, effort, and anxiety, being so far away, that they're going to be in great hands. Absolutely, exactly. These things can vary area to area and over time. There will be certain areas right now where it may be better to start with mid-term. Particularly at this time of the year as you're going into the summer months here, which is the off-season, it's probably better to have a strategy that's more focused on occupancy. But then as you come into high season and demand is really much stronger, you may want to maximize on the short-term. Then you sort of switch back into that model. Having that flexibility is really important. The flexibility and the strategist to help them figure it out. Exactly. That's the key that you were saying that you have the technology and the strategist to tell them and share with them and guide them so that they're making the best decisions. Absolutely. I think that's a real key component of your offering that I really love to be able to share with the investor. No, definitely. Whatever the scenario is, we're able to pivot, we're able to change, and we're able to ensure that there's a return there for the investor. Yes. Burhan, are there any other questions that you see from global investors that maybe you feel we haven't covered today? I think as a lot of people are interested in Dubai at the moment, you've touched upon the key things there, the key things that people come to us for. It's about having a hands-off solution, but also feeling that they can have trust and transparency. Transparency is a big thing. To be able to see how your property is performing and to be able to do that at the click of a button. That's why we've designed our mobile app this way so that owners have that real-time transparency. If there's anything they want to discuss, they can contact our account management team directly. They know who their account manager is. We have a welcome call in which we set out what the strategy is going to be so that they understand, and then we monitor that. They can monitor it themselves. I think really it's about transparency and trust. That's a huge part. That is why I started The Dubai Connect and why I seek out experts, the top experts such as yourself, to come on and make my investors feel more comfortable with that. So thank you so much, Burhan. Thanks for having me. I am excited for you and your family. You have a two-year-old, right? I do, yes. You and your wife and your family to be enjoying Dubai. I believe you and I will be doing a lot more together now that we will be in the same city. You'll visit in Spain as well because I know you have some headquarters in Spain. But thank you for taking the time to come and share the process of maximizing rental returns for my investors in Dubai. Thanks for having me, Gigi, and looking forward to working together. I hope that answered your questions about short-term rentals here in the city of the future of Dubai. If you have any further questions, you're welcome to write them in the comments. We'll get back to you or reach out to me and I will get the answers from Burhan himself. Please make sure to like, subscribe, follow, and stay tuned for the next episode of The Dubai Connect podcast. Until then, happy investing.