Sheikhs, Lies and Real Estate: The Untold Story of Dubai (22 page)

‘I have a question about the refrigerated
beach,’ said Brenda, a red-haired woman in her fifties who would be joining the
residential sales team.

‘Erm, sure,’ the guide replied nervously.

‘It’s a great idea, but it doesn’t sound very
environmentally friendly.’

‘Well, we will surely do whatever we can to
ensure that the process is efficient and no energy is wasted.’

‘Can you explain how exactly this will be done?’

‘I don’t know the exact dynamics. I will need
to come back to you on that, if that’s okay.’

In a few embarrassing minutes, we had already poked
a number of holes in the plans, and our poor guide looked out of his depth. It
wasn’t his fault, of course. His role was simply to mesmerise and impress
visitors with the grandeur of the project. Just like a magician astounding his
audience, we were being drawn into the dream. And like every great magic trick,
knowing how it was done would only ruin the illusion. Nobody ever asked ‘How?’
in Dubai; this was a question for the overpaid expat engineers and architects
to worry about. What mattered was the mirage, and our niggling questions were
certainly not going down well.

As we made our way back to the office that
evening, I bumped into Tariq, who was leaving for the day.

‘Have you enjoyed the induction so far?’ he
asked with a smile.

‘Yes, it’s certainly been very interesting to
see these projects close up.’

‘Good. So, I am assuming that you are now an
expert on the Dubai property market?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t say an expert, but I’m
certainly more familiar.’

‘Which means you are ready to make some money.
By the way, I have a surprise for you tomorrow before you officially start here
at Milestone.’

I was intrigued. ‘Really, what is that?’

‘You’ll see tomorrow. Good night.’

***

The next morning, Rav was waiting for me
outside the office next to one of the Milestone company cars. ‘Good morning.
Are you ready to go?’

‘Yes, but where are we going?’ I asked.

‘Tariq didn’t tell you?’

‘No, he didn’t.’

‘Ah, well then, let me just say if you think
you have seen Dubai, you haven’t seen anything yet.’

I got into the car and we headed towards the
Marina. We finally turned off the Beach Road and down a long driveway to the
Nakheel head office. A tall Emirati man greeted us at the entrance and led Rav
and me down a long corridor towards the back of the building. And there waiting
for us was the biggest helicopter I had ever seen.

‘Bon voyage!’ said Rav as I strapped myself
into the passenger seat. The pilot was a middle-aged American with a bushy grey
moustache, sporting a cap and flying jacket.

‘Hi, I’m Chuck and I’ll be your pilot today.
Are you ready for the ride?’ he asked and I responded with a thumbs up. Within
moments we were away.

The chopper rose high up above the buildings of
the Dubai Marina and headed downtown along the Jumeirah Beach and past the
villas of Umm Sequim and Jumeirah. It was a glorious day as the sun’s brilliant
rays shimmered off the glass panes of the luxury towers below us. We hovered
past the sail-like Burj Al Arab, a glowing white apparition on the horizon. I
could see the tiny white Rolls-Royces scuttling across the mini-causeway from
the hotel to the mainland. We passed over the Burj’s famous helipad, where
Tiger Woods had stood three years before to promote Brand Dubai. Directly below
us passed hundreds of mansions with swimming pools and tennis courts, separated
by an intricate network of streets and alleys. We then bore right, across the
Sheikh Zayed Road and into the emerging Downtown and Business Bay developments.
The early foundations of the Burj Dubai sat uncontested in the centre of the
massive construction site as hundreds of cranes worked fastidiously to erect Dubai’s
proudest monument.

We turned around and continued back up towards
the completed towers of the Marina. From this vantage point, it was nothing but
a chaotic urban jungle of skyscrapers, huddled together within touching
distance of each other. On the waters below nestled dozens of yachts and
speedboats, a few making their way to the open expanse of the Persian Gulf. We
continued towards the coast and flew directly over the JBR, where I spotted my
own apartment; one of thousands of tiny black windows above the mile-long
stretch of beach, where clusters of sunbathers lay soaking up the rays.

We then flew out over the coast and above the
trunk of the mighty Palm Jumeirah. From this unique perspective the sheer
grandeur of the manmade wonder was astonishing, the tree shape of the island
unmistakable and dozens of sprouting towers rising out of the reclaimed land
below. The pilot took us further still into the ocean beyond the palm, where a
random scattering of patches of sand appeared. They looked like the pieces of
an unfinished jigsaw puzzle, scattered across the surface of the clear blue
waters.

‘What is that below us?’ I asked Chuck over my
headset.

‘Welcome to The World!’

He pulled back and we darted upwards. As we
rose higher and higher, I saw something quite amazing. The little patches below
somehow magically came together to create a crude outline of the countries of
the Earth. They were all undeveloped as yet, except one between ‘northern
Europe’ and ‘the USA’. On it sat a beautiful mansion surrounded by luscious
palm trees, flawless green lawns and a giant swimming pool. It looked the
hidden lair of a Bond villain.

Hovering three thousand feet above the city was
strangely liberating. I felt calmer and more composed than I had for a long
time, unperturbed by the maddening crowds below me. As we passed every project vying
to defy the limitations of the harsh desert environment, the gargantuan scale
of the Dubai project was fully evident for the first time. I was astonished at
first, but I began to think about things I hadn’t considered before. Was any of
this really necessary? Could Dubai really swallow all this construction? Was
there actually any method to the madness? Was it ever going to end?

Sheikh Mohammed had surely made his point;
there was nothing left to prove. From up here it was clear that the fine line
between ambition and insanity had been crossed. What was once awe-inspiring had
now turned into a crazy obsession; the experiment was out of control. Dubai had
always justified its building frenzy on the premise of ‘if you build it, they
will come’, and so far it had worked, with new residents arriving every day to
seek their own piece of the dream. But it was a fickle premise. What if they
stopped coming? Dubai’s grand plan relied on the faith of the punters, and
faith couldn’t last for ever. All it would take was a single event for this
place to tumble like a house of cards.

For the first time, I saw that Dubai was not
invincible. I desperately hoped that I was wrong and that my scepticism was
unfounded. But something in the back of my mind convinced me that I wasn’t. And
it scared the hell out of me.

Tariq was an old-school businessman in a brave new world.
Having started Milestone from humble beginnings, he had single-handedly built
the company into the property powerhouse it was today. He had learnt his trade in
the school of hard knocks and through years of sweat and graft, which had made
him shrewd and highly respected. He remained a firm believer in mitigating risk
and keeping costs low. While his competitors took lavish office space, spent
generously on state-of-the-art technology and hired an army of salespeople and
assistants, Milestone remained largely unchanged from the company it was before
the boom. Its head office was a modest space in an office block on the Sheikh
Zayed Road. The computers were outdated and barely functional, and the phones
were basic. Tariq was not distracted by technology or expensive gimmicks;
instead, he remained focused on one thing alone – closing the deal.

The sales room at Milestone felt much like the
trading floor at Goldman Sachs. It was a tense boiler room where focused
salespeople spent their entire day glued to the phones, selling hard and
closing deals. As space in the office was limited, the sales team sat packed
together like sardines in a tin. Some joiners even had to share desks until
they proved themselves with a sale. The phones rang constantly from eight in
the morning until late in the evening and each time they rang, hungry
salespeople jumped on them like cheetahs on a wildebeest, hoping desperately it
was a floor buyer or investor looking for a whole building to flip. The level
of property experience amongst the team varied substantially, from the hungry
novice to the seasoned realtor, but they were united by one overarching
purpose: a burning desire to make money.

Successful selling at Milestone was often about
picking up the phone first, as nine times out of ten there was a deal waiting
at the other end. It was a game of reflexes over substance, although few
admitted this publicly. Salespeople wanted all the credit they could get for
their brilliance and ability to bring in business whenever they closed a deal. The
prize was not only a nice commission but bragging rights over their jealous
colleagues.

With such fierce competition and high
expectations, salespeople were expected to stay at their desks every waking
hour and sell, sell, sell. In Tariq’s view, coffee breaks and lunch hours were
a sign of weakness, so salespeople would often have to conjure up excuses just
to pop out to grab a sandwich or use the toilet. One of the most common and
amusing red herrings for a cheeky cigarette was that a big client was waiting
outside in his car to hand over a cheque. But soon enough everybody was using
it, and when nobody ever came back with a cheque, the excuse quickly lost any
shred of credibility. Soon the sales team stopped taking breaks altogether, and
it wasn’t unusual to see a salesperson collapse at his desk out of dehydration
or malnourishment – to the delight of his colleagues, as it meant one less
person to compete with when the phone rang. 

A large array of nationalities was represented
on the sales floor at Milestone. Each salesperson was like an ambassador for
his or her respective nation, navigating fellow countryfolk through the rocky
waters of the Dubai property market. Tariq pushed for his salespeople to be
considered as consultants to their clients, as opposed to merely sales reps. This
implied complete trust and was the best way to secure repeat business, since confused
clients became dependent on the wisdom of their Milestone guru. It seemed to
work well, each of Milestone’s salespeople developing a loyal client base who
believed that the firm was working in their best interest to make them a
fortune.

Rav introduced me to each member of the team on
my first day. There were two young Lebanese men, both called George, who looked
almost identical with slicked-back hair, crotch-hugging trousers and perfectly
manicured facial hair. They spoke with a strong Arabic accent, starting most
sentences with
yaani
or
yalla
, and had gained a reputation in the
office as a double act, often working on deals together. Their clients were a
cross-section of the Arabic-speaking world and although they knew very little
about real estate, they were doing rather well by virtue of their mother tongue
and tireless work ethic.  

Next to them sat Omid from Iran, a tall, slim,
understated man in his mid-thirties. He didn’t speak much English, but spent
all of his day glued to his phone with his mysterious Iranian clients. Nobody
knew who they were, but there were rumours at Milestone that he had sold
property to President Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khomeini; rumours that he never
refuted or denied. It was well known that Iranians were among the biggest
buyers of property in Dubai, so Omid was sure to be making a fortune despite
his modest and unassuming demeanour.

Emma was a tall, blonde English girl from
Shropshire who spoke with a seductive upper-class accent. She was the daughter
of a lord and had come to Dubai after her degree at Cambridge to ‘expand her
horizons’. She had fallen into real estate sales by sheer coincidence, but she
was now the preferred conduit for middle-class British couples looking for
holiday homes and Western expats searching for somewhere to invest for
retirement. She would often be invited to brunches and dinners, and hobnobbed
with the cream of British expatriate society. She hoped to marry one day and
breed horses on her own farm, and with the amount of money she had already
made, her dream surely wasn’t too far away.

Ashan was an older man from a small village in
Southern India who wore the same grey, ill-fitting suit to the office every
day. He had spent most of his career as an IT consultant, but had lost his job
and seen an opportunity in property. His clients today were wealthy Indian
industrialists and Bollywood actors, all of whom he called ‘sir’. Ashan was a
consistent top biller at Milestone, pulling in the sales numbers and making
himself a nice fortune in the process. He saved most of what he earned and sent
much of it back home to his parents in India, where they were enjoying their
status as the richest peasants in the village.   

The director and dreaded overlord of the sales
team was an obnoxious Brit called Edward Quirk. A middle-aged man from London
with boozy eyes and bony fingers, he was divorced and lived alone, and the
stories around the office suggested his penchant was to pay for companionship.
He spoke in a cold, patronising tone and broke down his sentences into
monosyllabic words, as if his audience were morons. However, his impressive
sales record was indisputable, and few clients saw through the fake smiles and
feigned belly laughs as he played the role of the slimy estate agent to
perfection. Perhaps this was because his clients, as most buyers in Dubai, were
in fact stupid and needed a pushy salesman to make the buying decisions on
their behalf. Edward simply smelled their vulnerability and took advantage,
making himself a tidy fortune in the process.

But when he was not closing a sale, the glossy
exterior faded away to reveal a grumpy, detestable monster who became the bane
of anybody who dared to step in his path. Edward knew how to wind up just about
everybody in the company. He would sit in team meetings though uninvited,
interrupt a client meeting just as a cheque was being signed, and generally
hassle and annoy anybody who was trying to get some real work done. His
management technique revolved around taking every opportunity to belittle his
minions. In his opinion, this was the best way to keep them in line and win
their loyalty. It didn’t always work. Despite the bitter rivalry and
competitiveness between salespeople, there was one common thread that acted as
a universal binding force across the sales floor: a loathing of Edward Quirk.

Of course, not everybody showed it to his face.
Out of fear, many gave him the respect and importance he demanded. They laughed
at his crude and often sexually explicit jokes and succumbed to his scolding,
while others just tried to stay out of his way. Edward could smell fear, and if
you showed too much weakness he would come down on you like a meteor shower of
disparagement. I quickly learned that the best way to handle him was to treat
him as an equal at all costs, and to avoid showing even the slightest sign of
vulnerability. This way he only ever approached me for work-related matters, or
avoided speaking to me at all.

All that divided the savagery of the sales
floor from the more humane environment of the business development team was a
single glass wall, and fortunately my desk was on the safer side of this battle
line. The head of the team was Rav Singh, Tariq’s CFO and all-round nice guy.
As a member of senior management, Rav was a mirror image of the obnoxious
Edward. He was approachable and helpful, and was well respected as a father
figure by his team. I reported to Rav and he would be my guide and mentor as I
toiled the muddy waters of Dubai’s real estate quagmire. 

The role of business development was to source
good inventory for the sales team to sell. This required building strong
relationships with developers so that they would offer their best stock,
preferably on an exclusive basis. Considering that Milestone was one of the
biggest names in the brokerage market and every developer’s aim was to sell
inventory as fast as possible, business development was hardly the most
challenging job. This explained the more relaxed atmosphere on this side of the
glass partition, as working hours were often broken up with random games of I Spy
and the occasional singsong, much to the disdain of the ever-busy sales team.  

Your overall standing in the Milestone
hierarchy depended on one variable alone: how much money you were bringing in
the door. There was no hiding from the numbers. Every deal closed was listed on
a giant whiteboard on the sales floor, and each salesperson was ranked monthly
according to the commissions they had earned for the company. But it was not
always just the sales team’s names on the board; anybody could sell at Milestone.
It was not unusual for the ranking board to feature the name of somebody from
IT or admin who had known someone who wanted a floor in a tower in the Marina
and had closed a deal. Indeed, to see a non-sales employee ranked higher was
the ultimate insult to a struggling salesperson. Milestone fostered a cut-throat
environment where only the fittest survived.

The sales team was divided into two: the
commercial team and the residential team. The residential team generally sold
to less sophisticated retail or ‘mom and pop’ investors who invested small sums
into studios or one-bedroom apartments. Their sales were slow and steady, small
fry compared to the mighty commercial team. Dubai’s self-confessed Masters of
the Universe, every broker’s aspiration was to work in commercial sales. As most
floor or building buyers were investors in commercial property, they naturally
worked on the biggest deals and earned the highest commissions.

The director of the commercial sales team was
Connor McQueen, a six-foot-seven American from Michigan. He was nicknamed the
‘human skyscraper’ for obvious reasons, and the irony that a man this size was
selling multi-storey towers was always amusing. Connor looked like the
archetypal jock – the kind of guy who was the captain of the college football
team and slept with all the cheerleaders. His charm and sheer size were enough
to make him unforgettable to his clients. A white face and a North American
accent always went down well in this part of the world, and Connor milked both to
his advantage. He was doing more business than anybody else at Milestone and
was consistently the company’s number one performer.

On my first day in the office, Tariq asked me
to spend some time with Connor to get a feel for the business and learn the
ropes.

‘Look, buddy, it’s not rocket science. Let me
put it this way, we’re basically glorified drug dealers,’ said Connor with a
straight face.

‘Did you say drug dealers?’

‘Yeah, man. We’re street hustlers, lookin’ to
make a quick buck.’ He smiled.

‘I’m sorry, Connor, I’m completely lost.’

‘Look, what’s the key to being a good drug
dealer?’

‘I’m not sure. I’ve never been one.’

‘Rule number one: get your client hooked. You
have to give a little to get a lot. You know, just give them a taste of the
good stuff. Right? It’s the same with selling real estate in Dubai. You sell
the client something small, like a studio apartment, and promise him a quick
exit. You know, just enough to get him high. He buys, you help him flip it, he
makes some money. Bada bing, bada bang. He’s fucking jumping with joy. You made
him money for nothing. He’s over the fuckin’ moon and he loves you like a son.
But the most important thing is he’s hooked.’

It was starting to make sense.

‘So now you got him by the balls. He sees easy
money. He smells it. So you up-sell him, maybe a one- or two-bedroom apartment.
You do the same again, get him an exit and make him some more quick returns.
Now he’s fucking jumping over mountains! So now you tell him to buy three
apartments, ten, twenty, a floor, a building. Do you get where I’m going with
this?’

‘Yeah, I think so.’

‘And the wonder of it all is that we make money
on every transaction. So the more he buys and sells, the more commission we
make. It’s a beautiful thing.’

I decided to play devil’s advocate. ‘Okay, but
tell me, Connor, what if you can’t get him an exit? What if there are no buyers
and the investor can’t sell and gets stuck?’

Connor demeanour changed as if I had said the
unthinkable. ‘Then the salesperson is not doing their job. We link buyers with
sellers. We create a secondary market. Right? If there is no demand, we make
the demand. There’s always somebody out there who’s willing to buy something a
seller is selling. We just gotta find him and make him buy it. Simple.’