CEO confident in the feature of Jamal Al Habtoor Real Estate
It is a period of transition at Jamal Al Habtoor Real Estate after the tragic demise of one of its founders and after whom the company is named. But even in these trying circumstances, the company is busy charting a future course sticking to the founding principles that made it a player to watch out.
The challenges are many, but the highly astute Laura Ruiyeva, CEO, is quite confident of meeting them head on and overcoming them. In recent interviews she made it clear that Jamal Al Habtoor Real Estate is well on track to make a lasting impression.
Q: Will there be any major change in the company’s strategy going forward given the unfortunate circumstances created by the Founder’s untimely death?
A: No, not really. Everything will remain the same. The foundation is the same. The strategy will remain the same as well. The only way we have changed is we have gotten more ambitions with more objectives achieve. We are not developers, our focus is to provide the highest possible srevice in the shortest possible time.
Real estate services usually have three broad divisions – brokerage, property management and administration But we offer more – legal advisory, mortgage advisory, brokerage and property management. At the same time, we have a business development and an investment portfolio. The short-term leasing was announced just recently and branded “Rahat”. We are not just one company, we are different holding companies coming together in a joint venture. We cannot hold one license and conduct various services. Our licence alone allows us to do three things – property development, brokerage and management.
To offer mortgage advisory and investment consultancy, we have three partners coming together on this. Three is a bigger picture to it.
Q: How would you assess the company’s present strategy?
A: We are very competitive. I would say: because we are one-stop shop, we give a better deal to clients who can go with us all the way through. If you take our short term leasing service was invented for our clients from abroad after we found locating them hotels was becoming a tedious process that grew out into a popular business. Rates begin from AED 600 per night depending on the property, season and location.
Q: You have a dedicated office in Dubai Marina. Are we seeing a situation where property prices of towers in the Marina are recording some sort of stability? If not, do you believe it will soon reach so?
A: Definitely prices in Dubai Marina have stabilized. With the new set of laws. all the transfers happening in the Dubai Land Department, there are set benchmarks which help the market stanilize a lot.
Q: Will you consider taking on new shareholders who could come in at a strategic level?
A: No, it will remain the same. We have always been three private shareholders, different shareholding companies coming together.
Q: Could you give an overview of the expansion plans you have for this year? Will these be confined to expanding the reach Dubai?
A: We have already expanded from 15 member operation to 45. In the last six months we have added another 8 000 square feet of offices, basically taking over this entire floor in Marina Terrace Tower. In total we will be accommodating more than 85 people. We have got about 400 people worldwide. We have already expanding by opening a big office in Russia and are also in the process of opening an office in London. We cover quite big regions, our next expansion is Asia-Pacific.
Q: What is the turnover of the company?
A: The first year we have registered AED 1 billion worth of sales. Now we have taken that number up by three times. This is only our retail portfolio. We are not allowed to disclose some of the other investment portfolio details. In total we foresee management of over $ 2 billion. Our success story is perhaps our determination to be the most professional in the market. We are very innovative and have incorporated a number of Western attitudes and blend these into this culture.
Q: The latest round of developments launches have seen the promoters go for exclusive alliances with a single broker on the sales and marketing. Is this putting additional pressure on the agency business in the market?
A: People don’t like being offered a property from three different agencies. So I do support this system. Ironically the reason why we have been successful is also because we have developed a strategy where we provide our exclusive service only to exclusive developers. We take up three properties at the time, one commercial, one residential and one retail or land. What that does is, it gives them enormous confidence and a better result in terms of time and sales. We have been able to sell projects from A-Z from three weeks to two-and-half months.
Q: With so many players in the market and so many pitching for same services, how do you keep it different?
A: I will be bold enough to say that there is no comparison to delivering quality. We have a very healthy competition. However, their structure is old-fashioned. We try to be as progressive as possible. We have just invited a team of experts from Hong Kong, London and the US. They are ex-bankers, ex-private equity managers.
Q: Do you have plans to operate on exclusive tie-ins with developers?
A: We are working with two developers at the moment. We can’t divulge their names. In fact the two projects we are working on are already 50% sold. We have a very tight decision-making process whan it comes to who would like to work with. We see their products, location, etc. and then make our decision. If we don’t have those elements, we don’t go ahead.
Q: There is a scarcity of skilled real estate agents, and it will become more so with the RERA setting minimum skill levels. Do these factors impact on the business and on the wider market?
A: Definitely, but at the same time what we would see is that more and more people would be educated. One thing we did before we started our business was inviting experts in the industry from the US to train our people and certify them. Definitely skills must be taught and developed. You can’t just say you are born with it. We have made it mandatory in our office to go trough specific training. Of course, different training institutions are going to make a lot of money.
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