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I feel i've been taken to the cleaners over this - I bought a 2 bed property in dubai marina last October, only just begun construction so prob be another 2 yrs minimum before completion.

I went to Mashreq bank to arrange the mortgage and needed to put 15% deposit down. I asked the bank's consultant who was dealing with the transaction so many times about my pre-completion financial commitments , ie how much would i need to pay prior to completion. The answer was you don't need to pay anything prior to completion, only start repayments once the property is complete. Fine, sounds good so we proceeded to draw up the contract.

Before signing the contract i asked again another guy about any financial commitments and hetold me we would need to pay 'profit' on the amount borrowed, ie interest, prior to completion but this would not amount to more than 1,000 dhs/month. I still thought it was worthwhile going ahead with the purchase, anticipating that i would make more than enough to cover the 30,000 dhs expense pre-completion once i sell it after completion.

Anyway fast forward 6 months and this 1,000, dhs per month has turned into around 5,500/month and rising with each dispersal made from the bank to the developer. I've calculated that if we assume the place will be ready in say 2 yrs from now i will have paid a total of around Dhs 200k - and more if it is significantly delayed which is more than possible in this claimate - the final figure could be 300k. The worst thing is i won;t have paid any of the capital off either, just the interest, unbelievable scam.

Needless to say i'm very pissed off with the level of 'professional' service given by mashreq, i know mortage market is fairly new in dubai but to not be able to give accurate advice on something as important as giving a customer advice on his likely monthly repayments is negligent in the extreme.

I'm thinking of getting advice from a commercial/property lawyer on this, i've had apologetic emails from mashreq but that doesn't cut much ice with me right now. I've got myself into a hole and with the value of the property falling with the rest of the market, my overall losses in terms of deposit and bank repayments could be quite severe.

I feel annoyed that I didn't consult a lawyer beforehand but you would normally expect a bank to be able to give sound advice/info on their products without double checking with a 3rd party. The contract is unclear, mention of some profit installments but totally unclear as to how they calculate it.

Anyone had similiar epxerience and how they dealt with it?

Cant say I have a similar experience, but i do work for a british bank. We have compliance sections in most medium to large offices who handle this aspect. I would recommend you independantly research who is the compliance officer for mashreq and go about it from another angle. Just a thought, good luck.

seardarren wrote:Cant say I have a similar experience, but i do work for a british bank. We have compliance sections in most medium to large offices who handle this aspect. I would recommend you independantly research who is the compliance officer for mashreq and go about it from another angle. Just a thought, good luck.

Thx for that, i'll pursue that route first and see what happens. Just feel like i've had my pants taken down, possibly the worst outfit i've ever had the misfortune to deal with.