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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.
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.
The apartment overlooks the golf course. Chris Whiteoak / The National
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
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