Back to real estate.

Something we have going for us, in this market?

There are just the two of us. And landlords like that. A lot.

Because a dangerous option?

“Bachelors.”

“Bachelors” is a very loaded word here in Abu Dhabi. In the UAE.

Back home, “bachelor” just means an unmarried guy or two renting a place.

But here, “bachelor” is short-hand for “low-paid workers who probably are going to live six to a room.”

To rent a place to a bachelor, then, is to accept that your place is going to be swarmed by a cricket team of guys, with all the wear and tear that entails. And the creepiness (for families or singles) of seeing the door across the hall from you open and 10 guys come marching out.

It isn’t their fault they can’t afford to live one to a room. But, really, you don’t want all those guys around. It’s the numbers. It’s the potential noise. It’s the coming and going. It’s everyone else thinking, “all those guys … at least one has to be scary weird.”

The landlord here just came out and told us, “I want to rent to families.” Meaning “anyone who is not a bachelor.”

I believe this is why our deal here is (we think) done. Because at the end of the day, the landlord doesn’t have enough clients to fill his building with people who are not bachelors … knowing that if you rent one apartment to a bachelor, you very soon will have a whole building of bachelors.

And, to be sure, within 100 yards of where I’m sitting are several places where I’ve seen a dozen guys come home from work at the same time and enter the same door. Not in this apartment complex, but in those very nearby.

Anyway, bachelors. Scary, for landlords. It’s a path you head down only when your property is so run down you no longer can get one or two people to move in. Once you step down that path, you have conceded your place is going to be destroyed in a year or two.

I think our landlord isn’t really to accept that yet. Which is why this could work out in our favor. Bachelors!