Make-Good Works
in Business Bay.
Units here change hands often. Between one tenant handing back keys and the next one registering an Ejari, there is a short window in which every finish defect on the check-out report has to be closed. ArabCare does the trade work that fits inside it.
From Keys Back to the Next Ejari
A vacant Business Bay apartment is a landlord paying service charge on an empty unit, so the pressure is always to compress this window. The way it goes wrong is almost always the same: the works list is agreed too late, the tower's access rules only surface on the first working day, and a two-day job stretches across a fortnight.
Inspect Before the Furniture Goes
We walk the unit while it is still empty and photograph every defect. Skids and scuffs made during the removal are easy to argue about later.
Itemise, Do Not Lump
Every defect gets its own priced line. That lets the owner drop items, defend a deposit deduction, or split the list between tenant and landlord.
Clear Access First
Contractor pass, service lift booking, insurance certificate, permitted noise hours. This is started with the quote, not after approval.
Trades in the Right Order
Substrate work first: gypsum patching, stone and tile. Carpentry and electrical after. Decoration and cleaning last, once the dust-making is finished.
Photo Set and Sign Off
A closing photo against every line item. That file is what an agent puts in front of the outgoing tenant and the incoming one.
What Actually Lands on the Check-Out Report
Roughly in order of how often it comes up on a Business Bay one-bedroom. Small-scope items, but each one is a line an agent can charge against a deposit.
Anchor Holes and Blown Plasterboard
TV brackets, shelves and heavy mirrors go into partition walls, and pulling them out takes a fist-sized piece of board with the fixing. A cut patch, taped and skimmed flat, is not the same job as filling a nail hole.
Gypsum workBlack Silicone, Tired Grout, Dropped Screens
The most photographed item on any check-out report. Stripping and re-running the sealant at the tray and screen, cleaning or re-grouting the wet wall and re-seating a sagging shower screen changes how the whole bathroom reads, usually inside half a day.
Bathroom worksScratched Thresholds and Dulled Stone
Marble thresholds at the entrance and between rooms take the worst of a furniture move, because that is where a sofa gets pivoted. Honed and polished stone can be ground back and re-polished in place rather than lifted and replaced.
Stone & marbleOne Cracked Tile, No Matching Stock
A dropped weight cracks one tile and the repair is trivial. Matching it is not. These towers were finished in batches and the range is often discontinued. Keep any spares left in the store cupboard. If there are none, we lift one from inside a wardrobe base.
Tile workWardrobe Doors, Handles and Closers
Sliding wardrobe doors come off the bottom track, bathroom doors swell and bind in humidity, handles work loose, closers stop closing. Individually these are ten-minute items. Collected across a whole unit they are the reason a handover slips.
CarpentryLifting Kitchen Fronts and Tired Hinges
Laminate and foil-wrapped fronts lift near the hob and the sink, where steam gets into the edge. Soft-close hinges lose tension and doors sit proud of the line. Fronts, hinges and drawer runners can be swapped without touching the carcasses.
Kitchen worksBare Roses, Dead Points, Tenant Additions
Tenants fit their own pendants and take them when they leave, or add a socket for a desk. What is left behind is a bare rose, a blanked box, or a switch that controls nothing. All of it goes back to a properly terminated and tested state.
ElectricalOpen Ceiling Cut-Outs and Cracked Panels
Light fittings get changed and the cut-out is left open. A panel gets cracked while someone reaches a valve above it. A plain suspended grid and a plastered bulkhead look similar from the floor and are patched in completely different ways.
Ceiling repair
If You Run More than One Unit Here
A large share of Business Bay is not owner-occupied. It is held by investors who live elsewhere, run day to day by letting agents, or operating as short-stay under a holiday-home licence. Those three clients want different things from the same visit.
Agents want a paper trail they can defend. Operators want predictability: a standing weekday slot so chipped worktop edges, loose hinges and scuffed thresholds get cleared between guest stays instead of stacking up until a unit comes off the calendar. Owners abroad want to approve by message and see the result without flying in.
Invoicing follows the unit, not the portfolio. Each apartment gets its own invoice headed with the tower and unit number, plus a covering statement if you have several in a month. A deposit deduction has to be evidenced against one tenancy, and a lump-sum invoice spanning four apartments is the quickest way to lose that argument.
Why a Studio Is Not Quoted Like a Villa
Most of Business Bay is studios and one-bedrooms. Plenty of contractors quote them off a villa rate card with a discount applied, which produces a number that is either insulting or unaffordable. We price three things: how much of it is actual work, how much is getting to the work, and whether an existing finish has to be matched or replaced.
- Scope is measured, not estimated by unit type. Nine square metres of wet-wall grout is nine square metres wherever it sits.
- Access is counted openly. A single loading bay, a booked service lift and a four-hour noise window cost real time, and we show that rather than burying it in the rate.
- Matching is priced apart from fitting. Sourcing a discontinued tile is the expensive half, not laying it.
- The minimum visit is stated up front. A van, a technician and a parking bay cost the same for one hour as for three.
- No number before we have seen the unit. We will not quote a bathroom from a phone photograph and then revise it upward on the day.
Bundle the Small Items
Three ten-minute jobs booked on three days cost three mobilisations. Booked together they cost one. Send the whole list, not just the worst item on it.
We Will Tell You Not to Bother
Sometimes a replacement front costs less than repairing one, and sometimes the honest answer is that nobody will ever see the chip and you should keep the money.
Empty Quotes Lower than Occupied
Nothing has to be sheeted, moved or worked around in a vacant unit. If the apartment is between tenancies, that is the cheapest week it will ever be to work in.
Five Trades, One Quote
A turnover list usually crosses stone, gypsum, carpentry and electrical. One quote and one team beats four contractors blaming each other for the delay.
Business Bay, Tower by Tower
The district runs along both banks of the Dubai Water Canal, boxed in by Sheikh Zayed Road and Al Khail Road. The stock splits roughly in two. There is the completed core around Executive Towers, Bay Square and Bay Avenue, where apartments are into their second or third tenancy and the wear is predictable. Then there are the newer handovers along Marasi Drive and the canal frontage, where the issue is less wear and more snagging that was signed off too quickly.
Access shapes a working day here more than anything else. Most towers restrict noisy trades to weekday daytime hours, several share one loading bay with the removal vans, and visitor parking is tight enough that we stage materials in a single delivery. Name the tower when you call and we will tell you what the window realistically allows.
Check the window for my towerAlso Covered Nearby
Same trades and the same hours across the rest of our Dubai coverage.
Business Bay Turnaround, Common Questions
What landlords, agents and holiday-home operators ask before the first visit.
Book a Maintenance VisitIt depends on the list, not the size of the unit. A typical studio or one-bedroom make-good list of sealant, grout, gypsum patching, a few carpentry items and a couple of electrical points is usually done in one or two visits once materials are on site. The limiting factor in most Business Bay towers is not labour, it is the permitted working window for noisy trades. Tell us the tower and we will tell you what that window allows.
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