School and accommodation for Abu Dhabi

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DH has been offered a contract for AD, wondering whether it’s a good idea to negotiate some of the allowances?

He is being offered 25k per child for school, 15k per month for housing, medical and relocation and annual flights allowance

From reading a few other posts it sounds like good schools are around 50-80k? In which case is it standard to only have a fraction of fees covered? Or is the school allowance low? I have 3 dc, 10, 6 and 1.

You have nothing to lose by trying to negotiate more (particularly for the school allowance), but it's increasingly normal for only a portion of school fees to be covered. As the city becomes a more desirable place to be and has less trouble attracting talent, companies no longer need to spend so much on recruitment and benefits ....

It's also hard to say whether the allowances are good unless given in the context of a wider salary.

My job doesn't pay a housing benefit, but the salary is generous/enough, for example.

And then your budget will guide your search for schools and living area.

His proposed salary is 55k Inc a housing allowance of 13k (not 15k as above), and then 75k for 3 children school fees. It would be nice to have more of the school fees covered as looking at the best ones they are 55-83k per child

Would the salary above comfortably cover a 3/4 bed close to any of these schools? BSAK, Repton, Brighton, Cranleigh.. I have no idea which are nice areas. My DH office will be in the ADGM square.

Look at Reem Island - apartments, not houses, but I think you'd get a 3 bed in your budget and you're close to Repton, the new Nord Anglia school and the ADGM. Also lots of the buildings have great views and great communities.

BSAK is cheaper than the other schools I listed, and probably my favourite apart from Cranleigh (from touring and what I know from other parents)

There are other schools that are also very good or outstanding rated at a lower budget than the ones listed above, I just don't know much about them because they aren't convenient for where I live. Join 'British Mums Abu Dhabi' on Facebook where these questions have been asked time and time again, and you'll get a flavour for the popular schools.

I don’t think that salary is enough to cover rent, extra school fees, ECA, car etc. (I don’t have kids here so don’t know about the school situation). Do you intend to work? Would visas and medical be covered by your DH’s company for you all?

Thanks for the above, will check out Reem Island. What is ECA? Visas and medical are covered for us all, relocation allowance of 55k.

So he’d be getting a total of 790k in the first year plus ~20% bonus.

790 minus say 150k for school (BSAK plus nursery for 1yo) minus 160k housing allowance leaves approx 30-40k pm. Does that sound tight for car, bills, food etc?

Im not sure I will be able to work while there but I do have my own income, I would hope that we wouldn’t have to dip into that though!

You can find a house for 160k but if you check out, as an example, Raha Gardens, Al Forsan Village and Golf Gardens you'll find prices closer to 200k. Sas al Nakhl and Al Reef are cheaper but not to everyone's taste. Or you can get a stand alone villa rather than be in a community and it will be cheaper but you won't have the gym, pools, retail, security etc that the communities do and you'll mostly be surrounded by locals that you won't socialise with.

These are all off island - I'm not so familiar with on island communities. Google maps will tell you the travelling time from these locations.

Thank you, I think we’d prefer community living as Id love for my kids to have the same freedoms I did as a child, roaming around with my friends. I hate the fact that they are just stuck at home here unless we take them out!

I will check out these areas, that’s really useful thank you. Any comments on this list I found of communities in AD? Preferred schools are BSAK, Cranleigh, Repton, Brighton, there will be more when I do further research

I don’t mind apartment, as I’m sure the bills will be lower too than living in a villa! Currently speaking to HR regarding school package, let’s see if they come back with a higher offer. If not we will have to pay the surplus ourselves

Also is a villa like this a good choice in Al mushrif (near to BSAK), it would come within our housing budget
https://www.bayut.com/property/details-7896504.html

That villa looks quite tired. You'd need to know the maintenance arrangements as things can and will go wrong. I recently woke at 2am to a total power cut as the AC had a fault and my colleagues were amazed when I said the engineer was there by 3 and by 4 I was back asleep! None of them have 24hr maintenance.

AC bills can be high in a villa and you pay 5% of your rent in tax. This means our summer bills were over £500/month.

Thanks, tbh I’m finding it hard to really picture living in any of these as they all look like empty parking lots to me 😁 we will go over next month and I will check out as many as I can and will ask about maintenance arrangements thank you

I think you need to budget 200K for a decent villa on a nicer compound. We are at BSAK, it’s wonderful. I don’t think you can realistically choose any accommodation until you have school offers in place.

Mangrove Village is very popular but starts at 210-220K, but it’s quite well located for most schools.

lots more families here live in apartments than I expected - lots at Sun/Sky and Gate towers on Reem: good community and lovely pools etc.

DM if you’d like more info

That location is excellent but villa is stand alone. If you want kids out independently, making friends, you’ll need a compound. Other popular ones in addition to Mangrove Village.

Hills
Al Forsan
Alyasat (walkable to BSAK but £££)
Palm Oasis (closest to Mushrif Mall I think)
Karama A and B
Khalidiya Village (I liked these as really central but they have a long waiting list)

Further out you have communities like Al Zeina/Al Muneera which are modern duplex type apartments- very popular too.

Hi OP, my husband has been made an offer in Abu Dhabi - we are very excited! I’d love to hear if you managed to negotiate the school allowance as we have a similar offer. How are you liking Abu Dhabi? Which school did you choose in the end? X

Hello, we didn’t manage to negotiate up on the school allowance but the company decided to increase it to 35k for everyone as they realised it was quite low. It still doesn’t cover all the fees, we went with NAS (Nord Anglia Abu Dhabi) in the end.

The fees are amongst the highest, 82k and 85k for my older two, so we have to cover the rest. But the kids are absolutely loving it, the school is so nurturing and lively, they love living in AD too.