This got a little weird, which apparently is par for the course in renting a place. In Abu Dhabi. In the UAE. In the world?
Imagine all the trouble you have with real estate agents back in your country of origin … and then multiply them by three or four … and add in language barriers, laws you don’t know or understand, the last overheated market on the planet … and that’s your basic apartment-hunting experience here. So many things can go wrong … it’s scary if you think about them.

So, a few days ago, we thought we had an apartment. Then things got weird. Yeah.
On Wednesday, I believe it was, I told our Syrian expat agent that we would like to take the tiny but clean and clever (and furnished) place just a few blocks south of the newspaper. “Let me know what you need from me to make this move forward,” I said.
Should be easy, yes? A week or two of the forms moving through the system. Etc.
Well, next morning, the Syrian agent calls and says, first off, he needs 10,000 dirhams (about $2,700) from us, like, today. Not tomorrow. Today. He will come by in, oh, an hour to pick me up so I can go the bank and get the money to give to him. Half of it is his finder’s fee. The other half is a security deposit that he originally said would be 4,000, but whatever.

Well, now we have some problems. We have nothing on paper from this guy. Nothing. The entirety of our dealings have been verbal. The apartment will cost this much, his fee is 5,000 dirhams (about $1,350), this has been talked about but not outlined. We will get a new mattress, they will recover the cushions on the couches. All verbal.

So, we talk to the newspaper’s housing guy up on the second floor. He says, bluntly, “don’t give him any money until he has given me the correct papers.”

So, I pass this on to the our agent … who becomes agitated. He wanted his 5,000 Right This Minute. I tell him our guy at the paper — and the paper pays the whole year of rent, and then takes it out of my check, monthly — has told me not to give him any money until the documents are in, and they are not in. Etc.

He doesn’t give up. The owner has a client who is very interested in the place.  If I don’t hand over the 10,000 dirhams, we could lose the place. He is trustworthy, he says. He has dealt with the company before. I tell him, “Hey, the housing guy at the paper said ‘No,’ and if you want to talk to him, here is his number.”

So, our agent calls the newspaper’s housing guy, and he tells our agent, “We have no paperwork from you, sir” … and he goes away. For about 12 hours.

Next morning, the agent calls us twice, each, early in the morning. We don’t get up early. When we finally answer his call,  he tells us he is submitting the paperwork, and the company will see it right off Sunday morning, and he wants to pick me up on Sunday so we can get the money out of the bank to pay him.

Now we have new problems. It is Friday, which is like Sunday here. Nothing happens on Friday. The guy at the paper isn’t even in the office. Nothing has moved forward. We have nothing documented. Nothing can happen until Sunday, at the earliest.

OK, then,  he says. “I will call you Sunday morning, after I send the papers to the company, and pick you up so you can give me the money.” Which is silly, because the company isn’t going to process all this information that fast. It could be days.

By now, the agent has tried to call us upwards of a dozen times. In our combined three conversations, we have told him again, and again and again, that 1) we have been told not to give him any money without papers and 2) the company has no papers. Not gonna happen. Not Gonna Happen. But that doesn’t stop him from trying to pressure us into giving him his money, and he never fails to tell us how someone else that the ownere has someone else very very interested in the apartment, and we will lose it if we don’t act.

Ultimately,  Saturday night, I don’t care. I’ve been thinking about this, and getting more annoyed and I decide I want nothing to do with this guy. There are other apartments in Abu Dhabi, and maybe some of them do not involve the pressure tactics of this specific agent.

I wrote him an e-mail, late Saturday night,  telling him we were no longer interested in the apartment, and copied it to the company housing guy, so he wouldn’t begin work on paperwork that we wouldn’t be needing. And I told the agent that a big part of the reason we had changed our minds was his pestering us and threatening us, and suggesting that his used-car-salesman pressure had cost him a commission. I finished with, “Don’t call us. We will call you if we decide we are interested, at some later date.”

So, that was over.

Or was it? As I told Leah, “He will take this one of two ways. He will be ticked off and write a nasty mail back … or he will simply consider this a negotiating tactic.” The equivalent of walking away from some haggling merchant on the street.

He tried to reach us Sunday morning. We did not answer. Then, finally, the calls stopped.  We figure he has seen the e-mail and is leaving us alone. Maybe there really was some other customer, and they’re moving in. We go back to checking the internet for housing, and Leah calls a couple of agents we dealt with earlier … We are startng over. Ground zero.

Today, we met the cousin of my brother-in-law, a local department store manager from Lebanon, and he gives us a name and number of someone he trusts. As well as some pointers. Never tell the truth about how much money you are willing to spend. (Always low-ball them.) Assume that you will rarely (if ever) see a place you want; you will only see places the agent wants to move. Get a receipt for everything, and have everything in writing. Oh, and assume that everyone is out to cheat you, especially as an American because it is assumed you are rich.

And now we’re headed in a new direction.

So, off to the office. I see an e-mail from our Syrian former agent, maintaining his innocence in all matters, attaching Arabic-language documents he has submitted (he says) to the company and signing off, defiantly, “and don’t think I don’t have someone else to rent this place!”

OK.  Whatever. A minor blast. Now he’s done.

Then, an hour later, the housing guy from upstairs calls. He has a bunch of paperwork from our Syrian ex-agent, and could we come up and sign it?

Geez.

We chat briefly. Do we still want to go there? Two days before,  I was so annoyed with this guy that I didn’t want the apartment just because I couldn’t stand the thought of him getting a commission. But then we think about how close it is to the office, and how reasonable the price is, and how it’s got decent furniture, and it’s clean …

And we go upstairs to see the company housing guy.

But the dickering isn’t over. It is about to enter into overdrive. The company actually has two guys who deal with housing, and they’re pretty sharp. They ask us is there are any promises the agent made that are not on the offer sheet. Well, yes there are. About a new mattress and new coverings for the couch. As well as water and electricity paid by the owner.  Oh, and we want to begin paying on Dec. 15, not on Dec. 1, as our agent insists. Because the company is putting us up for another three weeks.

And there also is a new, 5,000 dirham fee … that can best be described as “earnest”money. So, the guy wants 15,000 dirhams cash — 5,000 more than a few days ago. Like, what?

With the aid of the guys at the company, we write into the document the utility and furniture items … and fill in the beginning of the lease as Dec. 15 … and we ask about this new 5,000. Finally, one of the housing guys say, “Got his number? I will call him.”

Then follows an only-outside-America moment. Our guy is talking to our ex-agent, in Arabic. (Our guy is from Sudan; the agent is from Syria.) The occasional English word is in there. They are arguing over the 5,000. Our point is, we’re signing the lease; why do you need this earnest money …  we’re living there! Meanwhile, the other company property guy is listening in, and smiling at something (the perfidy of real estate agents in all times and places, perhaps) and offering the occasional clarification or opinion … and we’re watching, too, trying to guess how it is going. (And, too, we’re ambivalent.  The place is fine, but it’s tiny, and we don’t like this agent anymore.)

At some point, we get the sense they’re now talking about when the lease begins. “He wants December 1,” we are told. “No,”we say, “It’s the 15th, because the company is paying for us till then, and it’s crazy to go in sooner.” The company guys nod in agreement.

More discussion, in Arabic. It gets semi-heated. Finally, our guys says to us,  in English, “How about December 10?” And we look at each other, and shrug and say, “OK. December !0!” And we scribble over the dates on the document to that they now read December 10 2009 in, December 9 2010 out, if you look closely.

So, we apparently have an apartment. Once we pay the 10,000 dirhams to our agent — half of which is his fee. Of $1,350.

I suspect we will hear from him first thing in the morning. (I swear, he must already have spent this money.) However, we have our phones off, again, so we can sleep till a reasonable hour … and only on the way to work, at 2 p.m., will we stop and get the money — in cash — to hand over to him.

Before we left the housing guys’ cubicles, they say,  “Make sure you have a receipt.”

Oh, we will be sure. Yes we will.