My Own Home: Crypto queen buys Dh3.5 million apartment on Abu Dhabi's Yas Island

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Former journalist Rachel Pether moved from New Zealand to Abu Dhabi 18 years ago. Now working in digital assets and crypto, she and her partner recently bought an apartment on Yas Island that overlooks Yas Links golf course.

They bought it last year and had eight weeks to completely renovate it before moving in. Now they are fully settled and can’t imagine living anywhere else.

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The National takes a look around.

Please tell us about your home

When we first looked at it, it was about 2,200 square feet, including a large balcony. But it had 12 rooms, so it felt really small. We actually knocked down four walls, made it into eight rooms and really opened up the space.

It's a three-bedroom apartment with three bathrooms on the ground floor and a lot of open-plan space for hosting, and with direct pool access. It's one of only a handful of apartments that have that.

When did you buy your home?

My partner and I wanted to take the step of buying a place together, so we bought this in March of last year. It was tenanted, and we were due to move out of our place at the end of September and we wanted to do a big renovation project.

The tenants moved out at the end of July, so it was quite a quite a tight timeline. We had eight weeks to knock down four walls, change all the bathrooms, change the kitchen, redo the balcony.

How much did you buy it for?

We bought it for Dh3.5 million. Now there are some in the building going for Dh5.5 million that haven't been renovated.

We timed it really well, because since we bought it, there are nine apartment blocks called Yas Golf Collection, which are just coming online next door to us, and they've opened up a whole lot of F&B [food and beverage outlets], and they've also announced Disney. So, we've really benefited from the macro announcements in Abu Dhabi, but also some of the other properties coming online.

We put in about Dh400,000 into the renovations, so I’d like to think it would be worth about Dh6 million.

Why did you choose this place?

The story of how my partner and I met actually involves golf quite early on, and we found this place, which is on Yas Links golf course. When we saw the view, which is just over the golf course, we just fell in love. We're like, we have to have this place.

We both love entertaining and the changes we've made makes it a great space for entertaining. Now we are engaged, so it holds a lot of memories already for us.

How do you feel about the neighbourhood now?

When we first moved in, there actually weren't that many amenities, but we knew they were coming because of the construction that was happening next door.

A lot of our friends are golf club members, and it is one of two residential places that are within walking distance. We have a community here in terms of friends. We don't have a dog, but it's a good dog-walking community, and it's nice to see life outside the apartment.

What amenities do you have?

The facilities are great. There’s a really nice pool area and we're on the ground floor, so we have direct access to that. There’s an outdoor barbecue area. There's a decent-sized gym, given the number of people that live here.

The community management is also quite active, so they organise yoga. We don't have kids, but they do a lot of things for children as well.

And you're also within walking distance of Yas Mall. You're close to the airport. We're a little bit further out from, let's say, the centre of Abu Dhabi, but we actually quite like having that distance.

You can very easily not leave Yas Island, because I largely work remotely. I really needed a space that I would be happy working from that I could get out easily and walk around and look at nature and feel inspired.

How would you describe your interior design?

Earthy but minimalistic, trying to pick up the themes of nature. We have a lot of plants. We changed the flooring to more like a warm cappuccino colour wood, rather than shiny, slippery marble. We also have a friend who's an artist in Dubai, so we've got quite a lot of her artwork.

How long do you plan to stay here for?

We had this discussion. If the prices have really gone up by that much, would we consider moving? But we have hosted more times here in the last year than we had hosted in our six-year relationship, so it has definitely become home.

Neither of us has plans to move. We met here. We love this neighbourhood, and it's only getting better and better.

I travel quite a bit for work, so I really do like having the solid base here, but I don't have any plans to leave Abu Dhabi. In the last 18 years, it's changed so much as a city. I loved it then, for all its quirks, but it was more of a small-town village feel.

Now it feels like a hustling city and especially in the industry that I work in and digital assets, I feel like we're on the cusp of something here. So, from a personal and a professional perspective, it makes sense to stay a while longer.