A blog about what daily life was really like in the Middle East and the daily ramblings of an ex-pat mum. That's how I started the blog. We are now home, so I'm just going to continue with life here. I am a deeply committed Christian. I love to teach about and share my faith so you'll see some of that on the blog as well. Got a comment? Please feel to comment at the end of a post. May our Creator's peace be upon you.







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Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Renting - the Bizarre Saga

We lived in a large flat our first 3 1/2 years in the Middle East.  When we needed to shift around a bit, we decided to change to a villa since the munchkins are growing, and it was getting crowded trying to have friends over.

We rented/leased a lovely villa in a very nice area. Because I loathe moving and trying to find places to live, we signed a two year lease.  Our landlord told us halfway through this lease that he is putting the villa on the market.  That was a couple of months ago.

Well....

Yesterday, a local Islamic bank tried to deliver papers to the villa via our local security guys.  I didn't take them because I know they are not for me - they did not have my name or my husband's name on them.  I don't know who they were for.  Which got me to thinking....

We have not heard anything from our landlord (and we know that he has a mortgage through an Islamic bank for this villa).  Not a single call from an estate agent - absolutely nothing.  We know he paid way more for the villa than it is currently worth (not unusual in the area).  We've seen all kinds of places drop in value.  But, we have seen some rise in value in the region.  So, real estate can be a tough game. 

I phoned our landlord's assistant this morning, a very nice lady.  I told her I just wanted to touch base with her because we'd be leaving on summer holiday. I also mentioned that we had yet to hear from an estate agent regarding the supposed possible sale of the villa.  I asked her what the current status was. She told me that only my landlord could answer these kinds of questions.  What a totally bogus response!  This is lady who does EVERYTHING for our landlord.  If anything breaks, we call her.  Before, if we were going on holiday, we'd call her.  The situation is so totally bizarre. 

So, we can only hope that nothing odd happens while we are on holiday.  If I did have to fly back to the sand box to deal with our landlord, it would just be a typical moment out here in the sand.  Hoping for the best, but I'm planning for the worst.

Peace.

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