My Own Home takes you inside a reader-owned property to ask how much they paid, why they decided to buy and what they have done with it since moving in
Charles Goh, a software company owner from Singapore, is living out his childhood dream in Dubai's Emaar South by automating his entire home.
He lives alone in his three-bedroom town house in Parkside 1, having moved from a studio apartment in JLT, but his wife and three children visit from Singapore two or three times a year.
Most of the time, Mr Goh can be found working from a bedroom he’s converted into an office, but in his spare time, he tinkers with his electronics and is looking forward to the nearby golf club opening up so he can hit the driving range.
The National takes a look around.
Please tell me about your home.
This is a three-bedroom villa that has a lot of automation. This was my childhood dream, to have a fully automated home.
How have you automated your home?
I have a robotic dog, but I'm still working on it, programming it to do some useful things.
All the lights have switches that have been converted to smart switches, which means you can control them with your voice or based on certain rules, like maybe the temperature or humidity above, and you can control them remotely from anywhere in the world.
In the kitchen, all the appliances are connected to the internet or home Wi-Fi.
The front door is a smart door – it has facial ID and fingerprint recognition, then the usual PIN code, if you want.
When I walk into the bathroom, it detects my presence and turns on the light. When I walk down the stairs, a whole row of lights come on as you walk. The curtains also open and close on voice command.
There’s a lot of personalisation. The good thing about having automation is that you can be more climate-friendly as well.
What have you done to the bedrooms?
I converted one bedroom into a study area, as I usually work from home.
The master bedroom is my room, but also a theatre. I have a projector and if I want to watch a film and turn the projector on, I can give it a voice command through the iPhone or the speaker box.
I can also close the curtains, turn the AC on or off and the fan can run itself – that is the beauty of automation.
The town houses here are not that big, so I didn’t want to waste the space creating a room for entertainment, so I use my room and watch my favourite movie or series projected on to the wall.
How much have you spent on turning this into a smart home?
Probably about Dh60,000 ($16,300). The electronics are not very expensive these days because most of them are produced in China and they’re very competitive in price.
Installation might normally cost more, but because I’m trained in electronics, I did it myself. The challenge of a smart home is that it requires some form of integration and configuration which requires computing knowledge.
Since I run a software company, it’s part of my DNA. It's more of a hobby, so I spend my nights or weekends figuring it out and sometimes you don’t get it right. You have got to try it and experiment.
Why did you decide to buy your house?
I own a company here and I’m probably going to stay for another seven or eight years. My plan was to only go back when the new airport near my home is ready, which is probably my retirement age, as I will be about 60 in 2030.
That’ll probably be the right time for me to go home and maybe I will have grandchildren.
That’s why it doesn’t make sense to keep paying rent.
How much did you buy the property for?
I bought it about a year and a half ago for Dh1.4 million. It has gone up a lot more now. I think my neighbour about eight or nine units away sold for about Dh2 million.
Pricing in this whole area, I hope, will continue to go up. But, I’m not flipping it. I think I will stay for at least another three or four years before I toy with the idea of selling it or relocating.
Why did you choose Emaar South?
I have a studio in JLT where I lived before. I decided to choose a town house because I have an electric vehicle. I was trying to do my part for the climate but, at the time, I could not install my own charging point even though the parking spot was mine. I went back and forth with the management, but it was too tough so I gave up and decided to look for somewhere I could charge from home.
I was looking around and this fit within my budget and I thought it also has quite good potential.
The only complaint I have is that it’s far from the so-called central areas, like Business Bay or DIFC, but most of the time I work from home, so it’s not important for me to be close to the city.
They’ve also built a golf course, although it’s not open yet. I’m already in my 50s and semi-retired, so I want to have something in the daytime or early morning if I want to go to the driving range or do some walking. I don’t need a car to go there, I could cycle.
Also, I come from a country that has very high density, so I wanted somewhere with fewer neighbours and more space.
I’m pretty happy we bought this place.
