PR director Lucy Gow fell in love with the Estella neighbourhood in Victory Heights about 18 years ago. She was in her early 20s, living in Horizon Tower in Dubai Marina, sharing a property when money was tight.
After getting stuck in her home country of Australia during the Covid-19 pandemic, she returned to an inflating property market and decided to take the plunge and fork out Dh390,000 ($105,000) a year for her dream five-bedroom home in the same residential community she'd fallen in love with almost two decades ago.
She can’t imagine buying it, as such properties are selling for about Dh13 million at the moment, but neither can they imagine living anywhere else.
The National takes a look around.
Why did you choose this neighbourhood?
I fell in love with Estella as a location about 18 years ago. My mum and dad were out visiting, and they happened to have a friend here, so we popped over to her house. I was in my early 20s, I had no money and I was living in Horizon Tower, as we all were back in the day when we first arrived in a shared house.
I thought, ‘This is amazing. This is how the other half live. How do I ever get here?’
I went to get married in Australia during Covid-19 and got stuck, so ended up having to let our house go. We were in JVC at the time and had previously been in The Springs.
Then we moved back out here. We couldn't find anything, there was just nothing on the market, the rent had skyrocketed. We were paying Dh100,000 a year for a two-bedroom in The Springs when we left, and suddenly it was Dh300,000. By this point we also had two kids and two dogs with us, so we needed to upsize. We went to Al Furjan, which wasn’t there when we’d left, it was a new suburb but we got really badly flooded.
We were about to renew our lease at the other place and I happened to go on [property portal] Bayut, just for a sneaky scroll for houses I could never afford to buy, and this one had popped online about an hour earlier at a price that was actually reasonable, basically what we were paying in Al Furjan.
It had everything we ever needed and everything we wanted in a house we were going to buy.
Why didn’t you buy?
We've always wanted to buy, but we missed the boat, really. For us to buy now, we're buying at the top end of the market, even renovation costs have doubled. Now, what you'd get for Dh750,000 back in the day, you're now having to spend well over Dh1 million.
So we just sort of thought we were in our dream house anyway. We've done some upgrades. We've got an amazing landlord, a really good agent.
We would never want to leave. Unless, if he was going to sell it, we'd potentially offer to buy it but I don't think we'd be able to afford it buy then, because we're already priced out of the market.
How much do you pay for it?
Dh390,000. We were paying Dh360,000 for four bedrooms in Al Furjan.
I work in Palm Jumeirah, so for me to get to the office takes me 40 minutes. If we were to pay less we’d move further back to Town Square or one of those areas.
What upgrades have you made?
The property was in its original condition when we moved in. It had the pool put in and the landlord had just repainted the outside. The turf was from the previous tenant but it was relatively new, so we've wrapped the kitchen and the bathrooms. We've changed all the lighting and we have done linen curtains throughout and blinds downstairs.
The landlord is very flexible. We were able to negotiate our rent down in exchange for upgrades and he's renewed at the same price.
How would you describe your interior design?
My husband [Brendan] calls it the furniture shop. I grew up around the world, so my upbringing has been in Asian countries. There are a lot of nods to Asia throughout our home. We've got antique chests from Korea. We've got a vintage sideboard in our living room that comes from Bali. We've got a beautiful old antique Balinese-like shelf in our living room as well. So, it is quite Oriental, eclectic.
What do you love about Victory Heights?
It's super friendly. I love that it's gated. I can let my kids out the front and know that the security guard, if they try to escape, which they do, they'll say, ‘Lucy, your child's leaving.’
There’s a lot less traffic, because we're on a private road. We've got the Els Club [golf course and country club], which is literally a 20-second walk from our house.
It takes me about eight minutes to get to school in the morning for drop-off. My son goes to the nursery in the community.
What facilities do you have?
Each of the different housing areas have their own pool. They've all got their own gym. We've got the golf course. We're members up at the Els Club as well.
Every area has a park, so there are lots of kids’ playgrounds. There are lots of big grassy areas they've put in, like a football field for the young ones, with night lights, which is fantastic.
We've got padel courts, tennis courts, the driving range, basketball courts. We've got three nurseries in the vicinity. We've got Victory Heights Primary School.
Is there anything you would change about it?
No, not really. They don't make communities like this any more. They're a lot more modern, they don't have that kind of homely feel that a lot of the villas and townhouses in Victory Heights do. A lot of people have been here for a very long time, so you tend to have more of a local resident, as opposed to someone who’s just joined. So you've got a really great camaraderie.
My kids have the best social life of all. Honestly, I wish I had their social life. They have play dates every single day at a different child's house in the area. Our helpers have all become friends, but it’s also brought the parents together, too, so now we have this wonderful group of friends that has been forged through our children, so I wouldn’t change anything.
Maybe the rental prices and the sales prices, because it breaks my heart that I’ll never be able to afford to live here permanently at this point.
