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Discrimination against Kuwaitis in Kuwait

It’s pretty common to hear about expats being discriminated in Kuwait so it was interesting to read a post by yousefq8 who writes about how as a Kuwaiti he was being discriminated the whole time while apartment searching. It seems most of the places he was checking didn’t want to rent out to Kuwaitis and so he resorted to lying and talking in English to make things easier for himself. I have no idea why they would discriminate against a Kuwaiti, maybe expats don’t feel they can live comfortably when there is a Kuwaiti living next door? Not sure but you can read his post [Here]

81 replies on “Discrimination against Kuwaitis in Kuwait”

from what i’ve heard is that kuwaities will give you alot of problems if you rent to them because if they are late on rent or making problems in the building you cant do anything because its their country so they are not afraid while expats most of the time pay rent on time and be good nieghbors because its not their country so they dont want trouble. thats what i think and what i’ve heard from building owners

This is utter bullshit, building owners wants to be able to increase prices whenever they want and kick you if you are not paying rent.

In case it’s a Kuwaiti he cannot raise rent for 5 years and he cannot kick the Kuwaiti out, very small percentage Kuwaitis are assholes and bad neighbors but most of them wants a place to live, with rents going this high up and homes are this expensive and this discrimination…. It won’t end well.

Reasonable explaination.
But most of the buildings only like to rent Indians since they do not speak against owners rent increase apart from discussing among themselves !

Wheares Pakistani and Bangladeshi always speak up…

Hehe… 🙂

Our landlord also try to increase rent and instead of increased rent he received call from my friend lawyer. After this he is like cute puppy 😀

They can’t increase rent for anyone until 5 year. This low protects both Kuwaitis and expats from a**hole landlords.

The law protects everyone but they do know Kuwaitis are aware of it, they still take a small chance when it come to expats.

Kudos to you for doing that, protecting yourself is a smart move.

Can we have your “friend lawyer’s” contact, we can call him to talk to our Building owner when we have problems.

Call to any lawyer and ask him about it. As my friend told me lawyers even don’t taking money from customer in this case because this is guaranteed winning case for customer and they are collecting money from building owner after court order.

My rent has increased thrice in last 5 years, They say these days theymake rent contract for a year only,
If you fight they will increase rent by 50kd instead of regular 20kd

Its common in kuwait to discriminate for everything be it a q8ti or expat…if u a q8ti ….they discriminate you acc to the family name……very common in hospitals ..patients are more intrested to know which family in kuwait the doc is from .then decide to go for treatments to him or not ….

Its not about discrimination. Its not about that people dont want to rent out to Kuwaitis. Who do you think owns all these apartment buildings? Arent they kuwaitis? Ofcourse they’d want their citizens to rent in with them, afterall its their gain because they’ll have more tennants. The thing is, it is difficult for kuwaitis to rent in apartment building not for money issues, but because of the parties and illegal things which could happen in there. So they try to avoid renting to kuwaitis to avoid getting into problems. Alhamdillah money isnt an issue.

Not paying rent is one of the issues, but not only this. One of the my friend get reported in police from Kuwaiti neighbors for having birthday party at 8:00PM. Because of issues like this landlords avoiding Kuwaiti tenants, because if there is Kuwaiti family in building it’s not very good option for westerners.

My father-in-law had 3 apartments and had all rented to Kuwaitis. When he died and my mother-in-law took them over (issues in the will), they all stopped paying rent. It took her nearly 2 years of court cases and lawyer fees to get them out, and didn’t even get back-rent ordered to her for the nearly 2 years they didn’t pay. And all 3 families, on their way out, trashed the apartments so badly that she literally had to remodel every one (I saw the damage myself when I went with my hubby and a locksmith to change the locks after the court finally had given them a deadline to be out).

Not saying it is like that for all Kuwaitis, but if it takes that much work to kick out someone not paying rent (and ends up costing a lot of money), I can see why MIL didn’t re-rent to Kuwaitis after she fixed the apartments.

Fool … he doesn’t know where to search -__-

go to

findq8.com/SearchWReal.cfm

Another option is the mubarkiya real estate offices where Kuwaitis work … you’ll find plenty of deals. You’re Kuwaiti, why the f*ck do you go to expats who discriminate you as you say, when there are plenty of Kuwaitis working in that field for 20+ years. They can provide you easily with whatever you want + they will give you places that want Kuwaitis. I work in real estate , only places run by Kuwaitis get you the deal. Those expat places are usually for companies and big heads who don’t give a damn about you, since you’re a poor customer in their eyes.

You can always go to the actual man6i8a you want and look for “for rent” signs -__-

That guy probably knows nothing about the real estate and rental system here or to lazy to look around.

No, he’s NOT being lazy, because my husband and I have been searching for a place for **4 years*** only to get the same treatment “YousefQ8” has received. As soon as we find a place we like, the first question we are asked is: Are you Kuwaiti?? Even Kuwaiti realtors ask us the same question. It is extremely frustrating that we are never able to get the place we want because the landlord of the property only wants to rent to Westerners/Americans. The ironic thing is that -I- am American, but it doesn’t matter to any of them because my husband is Kuwaiti. What I wish they would do is at LEAST have the decency to meet you in person before they reject you due to your nationality. What I do is, once they ask about my husband’s nationality, I ask them what THEIR nationality is, and I ask if our nationalities are relevant to the rental. Then I just lie to them about my husband’s nationality and go see the place.

What we’ve heard from several realtors (including Kuwaiti realtors) is this:
-Many Kuwaitis don’t pay their rent on time, and it is difficult to kick them out
-Some Kuwaitis rent properties to use as “bachelor” pads
-Landlords don’t want a family with 3+ kids
-One realtor even told me that they rented a villa in a compound to a Kuwaiti family once, and the husband used to lounge around the pool area with his friend to watch the women in bathing suits
-Another realtor told me that they rented a villa in a compound to another Kuwaiti family and they used to bring their extended family over on Fridays, and all the kids used to run around the compound, and the neighbors would get annoyed

Anyhoo, I seriously have had my share of experience with the whole real estate thing, and I can tell you which realtors are fantastic, and which ones are crappy. There’s a real estate agency here in Kuwait run by Eastern Europeans that totally OVERPRICE their properties, and that makes me SO ANGRY! Feel free to ask me for names and numbers as i don’t mind sharing them. This real estate thing needs to straighten up!! 🙂

thats because you look in the wrong places … look for an apartment in some residential area like mishref bayan kaifan >>. etc the old areas

90% of them want kuwaitis, since they live next to them.

just go to mubarkiya and ask a KUWAITI office to get you an apartment and he’ll easily get you one -____- dont make a big fuss about it i see a lot of people there making deals.

if ur not bothered look in the website mentioned above , they also have so deals

Wrong places?? So living in a place of my choice is considered a “wrong place?” So I basically have to settle for whatever crap is leftover out there? By the way, I HAVE looked in Mishref, Bayan, etc and it is also the same old story. The only way I can live there is if I end up renting one of those old government homes which are not well taken care of by the landlords. Why should I lower my standards and settle for crap? We are decent, responsible people with excellent careers & salaries, and we should have the right to AT LEAST meet the owner/landlord face-to-face so he can see what type of people we are. That is all I ask. And yes, I have gone to Kuwaiti realtors as well and they also feed us the same story. The landlords DO NOT want Kuwaitis as their tenants. I can understand why they are paranoid due to the bad experiences they’ve had with some Kuwaitis, but we just HAVE to accept that this issue exists. There should be some sort of rental history/salary/background checks implemented into rental applications.

Hey, I’d love to get some info on where to rent/good real-estate agents, my family and I are in the process of looking for a new place but we’re running into the same issues.

You can reach me at [email protected]

Look forward to hearing from you!

Coz of the parties that will happen. Usually a bunch of dudes will pitch together some money, rent an appartment and use it as their party pad. Easy

If you go with a family, it would be a different matter.

Most owners don’t prefer Kuwaities and they claim that they don’t want the risk of not receiving rents.

The real reason is that owners prefer foreigners because it is easier to kick them out when the owner wants to charge higher rents. Foreigners get afraid and leave while the law states that they can stay for 5 years until the end of contract.

Kuwaitis understand the law, so owners prefer foreigners to get advantage of the lack of knowledge.

As a Kuwati building owner we tell the haris not to rent kuwiaitis because usually kuwaitis who rent apartments are finacialy unstable and have problems and some do not pay on time or go to the police station and make things up since they can get away with it, and some kuwaitis rent it for illegal activities.

Truth hurts, huh? He’s saying what EVERY other realtor or bldg. owner I’ve talked to says, so yeah you are right the problem must lie with the realtors and owners. /sarcasm

Exactly!!! It’s not “No Kuwaities”; it’s “No non-western origin”…

In my case, the Realtor was so nice with us, that he tried to convince the Land Lord playing the “American Passport” for my daughter…

disgusting…

Wait a sec.. unstable? If I want to rent an apartment to live in with my family I become unstable? I sure hope you’re not speaking on behalf of every state owner!

He probably owns a shit building in Hawaly, so yeah a Kuwaiti family living there probably has financial problems.

I just read your comment, and as you said usually.. that does not mean ALL.. so their should be some other way to judge a local …

i’m getting sick of this country, and most of the people.

some guy saying he was police, told me to pull over today. he was driving a white altima. he asked to see my civil id, i asked for his police id. he threw off my sunglasses and told me he was gonna beat me up, put me in the back of his trunk and said he was gonna take me to the police station.

i showed him my id, he obviously thought i was filipino or something and was trying to put me in the trunk………….he threw my id back at me after discovering that i’m american.

he followed alongside me on the 5th, i usually drive with my windows down. he muttered something about “my team”…..which after talking to some people, meant that he thought i was gay or probably that him and his team were going to ass rape me. also said some bizarre shit like, “did you see me in your future?”

had i got out of my car, he would’ve realized that i’m 5 inches taller than him.

yea, i used to think this place was decent………….

No you are NOT an idiot, there are alot of idiots in Kuwait and the streets are rolling with crime because the high corruption levels in the police force. Kuwait may become a place where you have to ride dirty to get around town if you know what I mean – peace.

It gets worse than that, I have known for sometime that most places don’t rent out to Kuwaitis because of all the aforementioned reasons yet I was surprised when my father called to tell me that while he was searching for an apartment he went into one building and asked the guard for vacancy to which the guard asked: “where are you from” to which the response was Canada to which the guard asked: ” are you really from there OR… Are you originally ARAB ?!” Apparently, after being asked what does it matter whether or not a person is a ‘native’ or not he explained that you see all the people that live here are expats (meaning only Irish, Brits and American etc.) and “they don’t like being bothered, by others who are not their kind”.

This post came just in time… Its not only kuwaitis they dont rent to; its also single girls recently. No matter where you work or how much you are ready to pay, being single lady means no apartment! This country is becoming worse by the second

Well owners don’t like to rent for Kuwaitis because many of them fail to pay the rent for months and months & taking things to court take even a longer time to get them to evacuate the apartment.. I was told that by ALL owners! Simply they don’t want headache! Hard to believe but this is the truth & what I was told!

+1 True,one of my Kuwaiti friend hadn’t paid the rent for entire 7 months he was finally told to vacate the premises.

The Real Estate Company that handles the rentals of several Kuwait-owned buildings confirms what most have posted here. The OWNERS of the buildings, who are Kuwaiti, do not rent to Kuwaitis because of the impression that Kuwaiti tenants feel that paying the rent is merely a suggestion.

As an American married to a Kuwaiti we face this all of the time. It’s true that if the Kuwaiti gets pissed off all they have to do is turn the apt keys into the court and the owner is screwed until he gets the keys. I knew a Kuwaiti guy who spent a crapload of money on his fancy house so he made the mistake of renting one of the floors to a Kuwaiti family. They wouldn’t pay the rent for months so he disconnected the water and electricity and they went to the police station and made him turn it back on. He couldn’t do anything until the 5 year contract ended. They totally trashed the floor of his house. We are currently trying to find an apartment and I make sure I go with my husband to let them see that he is married to an American in hopes they will ok us to move in. There isn’t enough housing for Kuwaiti citizens and 70,000 KD might get you a one bedroom house these days so living in an apt is the only option.

Couldnt a land lord insert a clause in the contract regarding late payments/no payments at all, and damages???????

Single Kuwaitis are not allowed to rent an apartment for reasons already known to everyone.

A married Kuwaiti as stated by many above, causes problems most of the time. Kuwaitis have a problem with ego, arrogance and authority, and this is translated to all aspects of their daily lives.

Now I’m not sure if an owner can turn away tennants based on their nationality legal wise.

Of course there are many other descriminations that happen between Kuwaitis in general for instance:

1- Beduins and non-Beduins
2- Non-beduins between themselves e.g Original Kuwaiti / Iranian Origin / Iraqi Origin
Of course there is no such thing as an Original Kuwaiti since he actually came from Saudi Arabia.
3- Beduins between themselves.
4- Sunni and Sheite
5- Colour and even dark skinned.

What a lovely society.

Well we’re actually talking about Kuwait here so..

I never said all Kuwaitis come from Saudia Arabia, I think I clearly said they have different origins and I mentioned the most common ones as an example.

Original Kuwaitis (Hathar) come from Najd, Iraq and Iran.

Most of the current Bedoun Kuwaitis come from Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

There are also Kuwaitis from Palestine, Kurdistan, Lebanon, Qatar/Bahrain and Africa.

Kuwaitis from Saudi Arabia aren’t a majority, they don’t constitute the largest community. There simply isn’t a majority because they are so many different communities and they’re all inter-married nowadays — ie. Sunni Najdi marry Sunni Iraqi, Sunni Arab marry Sunni Kurd, and so on.

@Mark,

Its not the expats don’t feel we can live comfortably when there is a Kuwaiti living next door.

Its the land lord who dont like to rentout to a Kuwaiti cos they cannot hike the rent to a Kuwaiti as the way they are now increasing the rent every year.

Our building owner is increasing 10% of the rent every year eventhough we signed for a 5 yeras contract. Iam sure that he will not do that if there is a kuwaiti staying in our building.

I know we can go to court but after the completion of rent contract we have to move out and find a new flat which will be like a rathole and the rent will be the same as our building.

Man our society is a timed-bomb. We Kuwaiti people should stop living in DENIAL, wake-up and admit what an awful community we are, identify the root causes and then find and implement solutions. yeah right, till the cows come home…..

We actually did live next door to a Kuwaiti family, and guess what? They didn’t pay the rent for months, were up till all hours of the night, coming and going, slamming doors, screaming at one another, as well as taking over half of our parking space.
And yes, we did move out to an expat only building where the Kuwaiti owner told us why (all the reasons stated above) he wouldn’t rent to Kuwaitis.

My husband and I have been trying to move for almost a year, but can’t be ause he’s Kuwaiti and I’m Egyptian. I understand why landlords don’t want to deal with citizens who call squatter rights until the issue is resolved in court (which is time consuming and expensive) but the solution isn’t to stop renting to Kuwaitis, the solution is to change the laws and make it so that they can’t just stay in a residence and not pay rent. Because, like many others, there are those of us who are decent people, who can’t find a place to live!

I live in a bldg. with two other families both Kuwaiti and at first it was ok, but lately it’s become a problem. I am not saying they are evil or anything like that, but they can be a nuisance. Most of our issues with them stems from them running around (they live above us) at all hours of the night, sometimes until 3am. Oh and the parking? It’s like the parking spaces were made specifically for them and no one else, even if they are marked. Sometimes the kids play outside until 1am, screaming and hollering at the top of their lungs. Our next place will be a place where no one lives above or below us, I could care if they lived around us.

Sadly this is 100% true. I’m lebanese and my husband is Kuwaiti. We were looking for a house to rent,I called a broker and we set an appointment. So I went with my husband to see the house and when he knew that my husband is Kuwaiti,he apologized and told us that he thought we were Lebanese since I was the one who called him and the owners refused to rent us the villa. I felt so humiliated and since then when I contact a broker,first thing I say is that we are a Kuwaiti family and believe it or not some of them refuse to show us houses without even seeing us.
Same thing happened with my American friend married to a Kuwaiti. As long as u’re a non kuwaiti,u’re respected??? WHAT A SHAME!!!!

Isn’t it funny? Landlords don’t want to rent to Kuwaitis because they have too much power, and want to rent to expats because they have too little. There are serious power imbalances in this country and it’s ridiculous how everyone seems to be looking to exploit someone else.

That is why when we relaunched the Pearl Marzouq complex earlier this year, we opened the doors and welcomed Kuwaitis to become residents in this small community.

It just doesn’t make sense to me as a Real Estate owner to not rent out to the people of this country. When are from this country !

The first line in Yousefq8’s post says it all to me. He says he has just graduated, doesn’t have a job yet and is married. I sure a hell wouldn’t rent to anyone who doesn’t have a job yet and has a family!! No freakin way!

And I, along with many posters here, have knowledge of Kuwaitis feeling they don’t need to pay bills. It must not be just a few Kuwaitis that do this to have this problem be so huge. So, frankly, the Kuwaitis bring it on themselves by being dishonest.

Also sounds like Yousef didn’t really do his homework before setting off on this quest. He sounded surprised that a landlord would require a security deposit. That is pretty standard all over the world.

I think that it is probably because ExPats make better tenants. If I was an owner, I would want better tenants. My neighborhood is mixed with ExPats and Kuwaitis. Everyone is friendly and seems to be polite and courteous.

I would rent to anyone willing to give me all the contracts cheques in advance signed and dated . I’ve done this before . if hes late and your fed up just deposit the cheque , if theres not enough to cover the rent you can have him behind bars with in a day , no need for courts . When their behind bars they always pay or someone else shows up to pay for them .

I had a place that wouldn’t rent to me (Kuwaiti, married, no kids) unless I paid rent a year upfront so I did, a lot of places won’t even give you that option though.

House prices are absolutely retarded, it should not cost more than $1 million for a small plot of land+house in an area that’s NOT SETTLED YET (so you get years of no phone lines, water pipes, have to buy a generator if you move too early). By the time the area is settled a mid size house there is $2 million because people are so unwilling to give up a spot.

Apartments won’t rent to you, most young couples realistically don’t have any chance of owning a house outside of the government plot of land you get after like 30 years (by that time it’ll probably be on the 15th ring road or the government will decide it doesn’t want to give them out anymore).

Starting salary for a typical Kuwaiti out of college with government allowances etc. etc. is probably around 1000KD. That’s really good for a starting salary but a large amount of people never really go the far above it.

You might think “Shit I’d kill to be making that much even if it was my max salary” but it’s literally impossible to buy a house on that salary. A bank will not loan you the amount needed because even if you take the largest possible payment and pay it off until you die you can’t get a house with it.

So then you have loads of Kuwaiti families living in their parents houses after they get married, so you have 3-4 families in a house designed for 1. The areas get congested and traffic gets shit and the house prices go up further because now there’s 3-4 families that would have no move out if you bought their house.

Bahhhh

if its a family not many landlords have a issue. but if its the “Shabab” then not even a Kuwaiti him self would be happy, reason being they like to Barty / Hafla , fun apartments, fights etc..

the real reason is that kuwaitis cannot get kicked out of the appartment due to the law of kuwait this is nothing personal about having a bad kuwaiti neighbor or that kuwaiti people pay rent late. this is overgeneralizing the population of kuwait does not carry out all bad kuwaitis this is bias to think this way. there are permited building for single kuwaitis or younge kuwaitis that can rent an appartment without a marriage agreement letter but in this cause not all buildings offer this.

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