Selling up to 60 properties worth $1 million (Dh3.67 million) each month, business is booming for Rustar, a real estate company in Dubai catering for investors from Russia and the CIS countries.
?We control about 40 per cent of the Russian speaking market in the UAE. It?s difficult to give exact figures because it varies so much,? says finance manager Ruslan Gubayev. ?Sometimes someone will come into the office and buy an entire building.?
Ruslan?s father Rafik came to the UAE in 1992 from Uzbekistan. After running a successful cargo business for 10 years he established Rustar in 2003. He says that there are two different types of Russian speaking investors buying property in Dubai- investors who will lease the building after purchasing it and end users.
Kazakhs have overtaken Russians as the biggest property investors in Dubai. ?The greatest number of investors is currently coming from Kazakhstan which, like Russia, is benefiting from massive oil revenues and a relatively stable political environment,? says Ruslan.
He reports that around 75 per cent of end users are interested in exclusive properties such as an apartment for around $3 million (Dh11 million). A 2 bedroom, 170 sq metre property on the palm goes for around $1 million (Dh3.67 million). He admits there are some ?very high profile? Russians investing in Dubai but refuses to reveal their identity.
?I?m afraid I can?t tell you their names. Let?s just says they are very well known in Russia,? he says after checking with his father on the telephone.
Yuri Krazhan has recently started working at Rustar.
He admits he was initially nervous about the possibility of dealing with some Russian speaking investors with ?reputations? in Russia and the CIS.
?It might have been the case in the 1990s directly after the collapse of the Soviet Union but now there is a lot more money being generated by a clean private sector, especially in Moscow, he says.
