Making a positive mark

With a combined business expertise of 30 years, Positive Properties’ Managing Director Samir Jamaludeen Raihana, and Operations Director Ranjan Thalagala, give an insight on how the Pakistani expat community are the pillars of its success

What is Positive Properties all about? Tell us about your journey.

Positive Properties and the champions who work with us are family. It’s not just a company with employees; it’s a close-knit group who believe in providing the ultimate service to our customers. Our tagline is: “Your property, our priority”, with specialists in sales and leasing residential and commercial properties.

Our vision is to provide seamless services, which are tailor-made to meet all the needs of our clients. We excel in our role by having best practices and transparency in laying out intelligent processes within the sphere of the real estate industry.

Our strength is to stay positive through every challenge. This is a fiercely competitive industry where deals are won or lost. Hence it’s important for senior management and team members to motivate and support each other to be on top of their game. Regular training and brain storming sessions ensure that we deliver the best service to our clients.

Our friendly and efficient support staff are always ready to assist each champion and ensure that our clients are treated with priority. The same can be verified with our clients’ testimony on Trust Pilot.

We began in 2017 when a group of friends came together with a vision to provide exceptional quality and prompt service to clients in their search for the right property. The knowledge and expertise we bring is from a combined real estate industry experience of over 30 years. All these years, we have always stood by the belief of customer‐centricity and our happy customers vouch by that. The UAE is moving at a fast pace and we need to adapt to the changes and grow along with this country.

To quote His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE, and the Ruler of Dubai — “Change or you will be changed: leaders who neglect the good of their people will be forsaken. Leadership is a service, not a gateway to privilege”, and we strongly believe in this.

Why is the Pakistan market important?

For most Pakistanis, the UAE and especially Dubai is considered a second home. Affluent Pakistanis, while they expand their businesses in the UAE, also are interested in relocating to Dubai. Proximity, cultural attraction, absence of income tax, easy ownership transfers and strong rental yields has put Dubai as the most preferred city for real estate investments in the whole Mena region.

Affluent Pakistanis continue to invest in properties in Dubai, despite the Covid-19 pandemic because the emirate tops as a dream destination. Dubai offers annual rental yields between six and ten per cent, which is way beyond the benchmark returns in most developed economies. Property investments can buy significantly more real estate space in Dubai than in most other cosmopolitan cities such as Karachi, London or Singapore. Moreover, as the Dubai real estate market is highly regulated, Pakistanis are eyeing properties in Dubai more than ever before.

Pakistanis have been looking for homes in Dubai since the pandemic struck. Be it in Palm Jumeirah, Marina or Downtown or even in areas like Jumeirah Village Circle, Jumeirah Lake Towers, Meydan and Dubai Hills Estate, the return on investment has been good. In short, Dubai offers so many interesting choices at affordable prices.

Thirty per cent of our current business is from the Pakistani clients, so they are definitely an important client base for us. The team can speak Urdu, Punjabi and 17 other languages.

What other clients do you cater to?

The UAE is truly in the centre of the world and there is almost every nationality living or transiting though this country. We have a multi-national team who can speak Arabic, English, Urdu, Punjabi, Spanish, French, Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, Marathi, Tagalog, Sinhalese, Farsi, Russian, Turkish, Kazakh, Ewe and Kom. So, we can confidently cater to the property investment requirements of most nationalities in the UAE.

As a company, we believe in being transparent and providing complete details about the process and charges to our clients. Whether it’s an office or a villa, lease or sale, our client is hand-held throughout the process and our priority is always our clients’ satisfaction.

Nasser Salem Saif Abdullah Salem, Senior Advisor — Strategy And Planning

What’s your business focus for 2021?

As we specialise in most areas in Dubai, our focus for the moment remains with growing here. The new developments and projects recently handed over are the key factors in our month-on-month performance. We have a dedicated off-plan team and the remaining champions focus on leasing and sales all over Dubai.

We are approved agents for Emaar, Nakheel, Dubai Holdings, MBR City, DAMAC, Majid Al Futtaim, Sobha, MAG, AZIZI, Danube Properties and WASL Properties to name a few.

How do you keep your team motivated?

We work as a family and everyone is accessible — right from the managing director to our office boy. This makes work easy and no time is wasted when critical decisions need to be taken. We also follow a flexible work style and our office is open 24/7.

Incentives are a very important part to keeping the team motivated. Performers are entitled to Mall Gift cards, staycations at 5-Star hotels, scuba diving, helicopter rides, latest gadgets and accessories, theme park passes, etc. Appreciating performance and sharing winning experiences on the sales floor is a weekly habit here. We believe this motivates everybody to strive harder to go beyond given targets.

Team building activities are a regular at Positive Properties. ‘Fun Thursdays’, sporting activities such as cricket, badminton and football matches, billiards competitions, celebrating festivities together (complying with social distance rules) helps us to remain a close-knit family.

We take this opportunity to wish Happy Independence Day to all Pakistani readers!