Tigris views: From a Minnesota apartment, young entrepreneurs venture into Iraqi real estate
By Patrick Condon, APThursday, May 13, 2010
Young real estate entrepreneurs link US and Iraq
ST. PAUL, Minn. — A unique real estate venture based out of an apartment in St. Paul, Minn., is helping connect expatriate Iraqis who still own property in that country with buyers there.
The three partners in Forex Realty Consultants are all 23-year-olds looking for their own niche in today’s economy. Derrick Turner and Ishraf Ahmad met as undergraduates at Minnesota’s Carleton College, where they hatched a plan to profit from Iraq’s booming postwar real estate market.
They recruited Ali al-Robaie (ahl-row-BYE’) in an ad on Craigslist. He’s the man on the ground in Baghdad, where he navigates concrete blast walls and police checkpoints.
The young entrepreneurs have already closed a half-dozen real estate deals and have about three dozen more on their plates.
On the Net:
www.frc-iraq.com/
