Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
In a high-rise apartment building in Minnesota's capital city, two 23-year-old men roll out of bed every morning, convene on a living room futon and fire up their laptops to check on a couple dozen properties they've listed for sale in Iraq.
Half a world away, their colleague, also 23, is already on the move in Baghdad: Showing houses and appraising properties as he navigates around concrete blast walls.
The three men are part of a unique real estate venture that connects expatriate Iraqi property owners with buyers in Iraq. Though still a fledging business, they've already sold several properties, taking advantage of the war-torn country's booming real estate market.
"What we are aiming to do is create a name for our business," said Ali Al Robaie, the Iraqi who teamed up with Americans Ishraf Ahmad and Derrick Turner to establish Forex Realty Consultants. "We know Iraq has a bright future, so we have a really big optimism in the Iraqi market."
Ahmad and Turner, who've yet to visit Iraq, were undergrads at Minnesota's Carleton College when they hatched a plan to get a piece of Iraq's real estate market.
They recruited equal partner Al Robaie through a Craigslist advertisement, and less than two years later, they've sold five residential and business properties and done appraisals and other services for another 15 or so clients.
Seven years after the US invasion of Iraq and less than six months from the promised pullout of combat operations, the three young entrepreneurs are treading where many, much larger companies are still reluctant to venture.
"We need to get more Americans out there taking advantage of the investment opportunities," said Yasmin Motamedi, executive director of Middle East initiatives for the US Chamber of Commerce.
For the three partners, Forex is less about politics and more about opportunity. "Coming out of college and looking at this economy, both of us knew that we wanted to do something a little different than just a nine-to-five job," Ahmad said.
In May 2008, Turner was studying in Europe when he read an article about skyrocketing property values in Iraq. When he returned home, he and Ahmad spent many late nights discussing how they might capitalise on it. There was one problem. Neither knew a whole lot about real estate.
"We both read 'Real Estate for Dummies',"Ahmad said. They researched, drew up a business plan and recruited Al Robaie, an Iraqi native who was living in Sweden at the time. While Ahmad and Turner recruit expatriate customers, operate the business website and manage paperwork, it's Al Robaie who's on the ground.
