My Own Home: Former cardiac surgeon settles in heart of Dubai Marina for Dh2.95 million

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

Kerstin Brehm, a former cardiac surgeon from Germany, moved to Dubai three years ago for a job as managing director of an international corporation. Since then, she has founded her own company as a career and leadership consultant and bought a property she loves in Dubai Marina.

While she and her husband, Michael, were already renting in Marina Gate when their landlord issued an eviction notice, they decided to stay put and buy a two-bedroom apartment in the same building. They paid Dh2.95 million about 18 months ago and it has since surged in value.

The National takes a look around.

Please tell us about your home.

It's a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in Marina Gate, probably one of the newer buildings in the area, so quite modern.

We have a balcony looking over the pool – we are not fully Marina-facing unfortunately, but I can see the Palm and the harbour from my office and my bedroom. So, when I wake up in the morning, I see the sea, which is nice.

It’s not an extraordinary place, but I love it because it's our place. I think we made it home.

Why did you decide to buy?

We were in the same building, but then the landlord gave us notice that he wanted to live in his property. We could still have lived there for another year, but that was kind of the pushing point into deciding we were really searching and looking into buying something.

Why did you choose this neighbourhood?

We had a look at different locations, like Dubai Creek Harbour and Business Bay. But then we realised we were not ready yet to leave the Marina. We actually love our building with all the facilities, so we moved up 10 floors.

We love the view of water everywhere. It’s just so nice to live here and be up at night and have all the lights and the boats. It's always a busy area.

I like living somewhere where it's busy and it has a lot of cafes, a lot of restaurants, a lot to do here. And it doesn't involve the car, so you can walk.

What facilities do you have?

We have two pools. We have a padel court, a gym, a squash court, a sauna. I have never used the sauna, but there's supposed to be one.

What renovations have you done?

We are European and we love wooden flooring, so we did the flooring in a wood optic. We foiled the wardrobes in a brownish colour and then we had a built-in wardrobe in the living room space because there was dead space and I needed more storage.

We also had a dishwasher built in, because there wasn’t one and I can’t live without. We probably spent about Dh25,000 to Dh30,000.

How was the process of renovating?

We had some time overlapping when we already bought the apartment, but we were still renting downstairs, so we weren't in a hurry. We could just say to the workers that the apartment was open. That was quite smooth and then it was all ready when we wanted to move in.

How much is the property worth now?

It was Dh2.95 million. I don’t answer the five phone calls I get daily at the moment, but I think we could potentially sell it for about Dh3.7 million.

How would you describe your interior design?

We brought most of the furniture over when we moved here, so it's from Germany. It's probably a bit of modern Scandi. I would say it's not completely Scandi, though, because I love colour, and so it has a bit of colour here and there, but modern touches.

How long do you plan to stay in this apartment?

You never know, but for now, I don't think we’ll move soon. It's great here. And as I said, I love the area, I love the building, but I’ll never say never. If we have the possibility to have the full-facing Marina view, I’d think about it.

When we moved to Dubai we thought at first we’d be here for maybe two or three years, but now we’ve been here three years and it’s too short. We can’t go back yet.